I Scream Steele - Story 5
by Camargue
Summary: Another tale of Laura Holt and Remington Steele, the fifth chronological installment of a planned series picking up where the show ended. This is a classic tale of private investigators at work – the bread and butter of how the Remington Steele agency paid the bills. But there's some personal stuff in there as well. Like all my work, it's grounded in the series canon.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

Laura Steele picked up her black cat, Nero. "Good morning, Nero," she said with a wide smile. "What did you think of your new home, hmm?"

She held him close to her for a few seconds, and could feel the vibrations from his purring against her chest. Nero, a docile, phlegmatic cat, was not generally demonstrative. In this regard, mistress and pet were well matched. But after a separation of over a month, Laura had felt joyful on the previous afternoon when collecting him from the kennel service and bringing him for the first time to the apartment where she now lived with Remington.

Laura took the elevator down to the first floor lobby of the North Rossmore Avenue building, and approached the concierge's desk. One of the two uniformed men behind the desk turned towards her and smiled. "Hello, I'm Mrs Steele," she said. "From Apartment A. I spoke to one of your colleagues yesterday – Alvin – and he told me to come back today – Sunday – and speak to you about my cat, Nero."

"Of course, Mrs Steele. Alvin left us a note about the matter. Please, why don't you step into the office for a second and we can have a talk?" said the concierge. Laura was let in through a gate in the reception desk and shown into the glass walled office behind it. She sat in front of one of the large desks, while the doorman she had spoken to took a seat behind it.

"I'm Pete," he said. "My colleague out there today is Emilio."

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Pete. Are you in charge here?"

"No ma'am. That would technically be Alvin – he's the head concierge – but we're all pretty relaxed about that stuff."

"Oh, right."

"Yeah. You see, Mrs Steele, we have a team here of nine concierges, and we all work on a shift basis. There will usually be two of us on the front desk and parking duties at any time of the day or night; except sometimes during the weekday evenings – it can get kinda busy, and we sometimes have three guys on duty, just 'cos there's so many cars to valet park."

"I see. Well, I explained the situation to Alvin, but of course, I had only just collected Nero yesterday when we spoke."

"Is this the little fella? Can I touch him?"

"Yes, of course. Nero – say hello to Pete!" Laura stroked Nero as she leaned forward, to let the doorman scratch the cat under his chin for a few seconds. The doorman smiled, then was all business again.

"Well, Mrs Steele, I know that you've only recently moved into the building, but I guess your husband has passed over a copy of the building rules and bylaws? The bottom line: there is no problem with property owners in the building having small pets, so your cat will be okay. In fact, we have a lotta older residents in the building who have dogs and cats. There is a size restriction, so the condo board doesn't allow large dogs, but this little fella here will be fine.

"It is the responsibility of apartment owners, however, to arrange for the care and good behavior of their pets – this applies especially to taking them for walks, and to litter tray situations etc. – I'm guessing you know what I mean?"

"Oh, yes – your meaning was clear, thank you."

"Sure, sure…like I said, most of our residents will take their dogs for a walk, have their pooper-scoopers ready, etc. Our main concern is preserving the cleanliness of the hallways and grounds. A lot of the residents that work employ professional dog walkers or cat sitters, you know?" Laura nodded. "Anyway, the concierge team is always happy to be as helpful as possible, and we are prepared to take care of pets in emergency situations, but it is not generally a routine kind of a deal."

"Erm…what do you mean, 'emergency situations'?"

"Oh, well…like a few weeks ago, one of our tenants was caught late at their office – real late – and so one of the guys on duty was quite happy to go up to that apartment and feed the dog, you see. This is a high trust position, right here – the front desk has keys to almost all the apartments for such emergencies. In fact, I think in this case it was my colleague Buddy who did it, and he's a real animal lover anyways – so he actually took the dog for an evening walk as well. But that situation was an exceptional one, you see?"

"Of course; still, it's great that you are so helpful."

"Oh, we try our best, Mrs Steele," said Pete the doorman, smiling broadly. "Now, what I understand from Alvin's note is that your main problem is that you want a way for this little fella here to come and go from Mr Steele's – I mean your – apartment, right?"

"Yes, Pete, that's right. Nero here is pretty self-sufficient, so I am happy for him to be left to himself, as he's used to it. Of course, my husband and I work all day. But we're lucky, since we're on the top floor, we have the terrace which will give Nero access to the outside. So when we talked it over, it seemed worth checking out with you whether there was a route down to ground level on the outside of the building."

"Uh-huh, that's what we understood. Well, Mrs Steele, we talked it over and it seems to us that if you can train your cat, erm Nero – to use the fire escape route, then it can come and go as it pleases. The external fire escape on the side – the north side – of the building is fixed down to the ground, there's no retracting ladder at the ground level. So that means your cat here could climb the fire escape all the way up to the fifth story and your apartment terrace – I guess if it's smart enough. Would you like to check out the route?"

Laura nodded assent, and they rose and went out to the side of the building. The doorman took her to the base of the fire escape ladder, which switched its way back-and-forth up the side of the building.

"It's quite exposed, isn't it? Isn't it a security risk?" asked Laura.

"To be honest with you Mrs Steele, it is – but that's the case with most fire escapes. We do have sensors that'll trigger floodlights at night if they detect any movement, up there and there…" Pete pointed high on the side wall. "And we have closed circuit cameras that are trained on both fire escapes – there's an identical one on the south side of the building – so if there's any suspicious activity, like, we'll catch it on tape."

"Oh, well that's good to know."

"Yeah. In fact, in an upscale building like this, security is as tight as it could be. Remember, one of the concierge staff also does a patrol round the building and down into the garage once an hour, twenty-four hours a day. And of course, if any of the fire escape doors are opened, they trigger an alarm in the concierge station as well. To be honest with you, Mrs Steele, we have had problems of nefarious characters trying to obtain ingress to the building using the fire escapes, so we are trying to be constantly vigilant about it."

"Hmm…" Laura nodded, thinking that most of the nefarious characters had probably been ex-girlfriends of Remington's, trying to gain ingress to his apartment, and even to his bed.

"So, would you like to head up now?"

Laura assented, then put Nero down and attached a lead to his collar. Following Pete the doorman, they began to climb up the fire escape, Laura dragging Nero with her and occasionally speaking to him, hoping that he would learn the route to their apartment and its terrace.

At the top, Laura picked Nero up again and held him in her arms, as she looked about. Most of her field of vision was taken up by the tile roof of the building, folded as it was into odd planes and angles, with her neighbors' dormer windows visible here and there, as well as huge chimney stacks from the days when the apartments would have been heated by wood or coal fires. Across an area of sloping roof, she could make out the wall of her apartment's terrace, the only one on this side of the building.

"Look, Nero – there's home, okay?" she said. Laura was unsure if her cat understood, but decided it was time to head back down.

Turning around and looking down for the first time, she suddenly felt dizzy; she put out a hand to the fire escape rail to steady herself. A memory of when she had fallen from Remington's terrace a couple of years earlier came back to her. It wasn't until this moment that she had ever thought about how far she had actually fallen in her fight with Clarissa Custer – and how easily she could have been killed, if their fall had not been broken by one of the enormous, landscaped laurel hedges that surrounded the apartment block.

"Are you okay, Mrs Steele?" asked Pete.

"Erm…yes Pete, I'm fine. Let's head back, shall we?"

Pete led the way back down the fire escape, Laura again letting Nero walk down on the lead, in the hope that he would learn the route. Back in the lobby, she thanked Pete, then took the elevator up to her apartment.

She took Nero out onto the terrace via the dining room. His basket had been tucked into a corner next to this door, and since Remington had refused point blank to allow a litter tray inside, it was just on the outside of this same door. Nero would probably have to learn to come and go through this dining room door. But he had only been there one day, and Laura was not sure how she could keep the door open while they were at work without compromising the apartment's security; perhaps, Laura thought with a smile, they would have to get a cat flap.

Remington joined her on the terrace, handing her one of the cups of coffee he was holding. "All done?" he asked.

"Yes, thanks." Laura tried to point Nero's paws towards the fire escape. "Look, Nero – over there! That's the fire escape. Do you understand?"

"Er, Laura – is there any point speaking to Nero like he's an intelligent human being? He's a cat, you know."

"Oh, but he's special, isn't he? Aren't you, Nero? He's very intelligent, Remington – I'm sure he'll quickly figure out the route down to ground level."

"So the concierge chaps were content to show you the fire escape and let this little fellow use it? I half thought they might not be too keen on the idea."

"They were very helpful – like you said, he's a cat not a human being. It's just a case of Nero now getting used to it."

Steele chuckled ruefully. "I never thought I'd ever live with a pet, Laura. I was always on the move – couldn't afford to be tied down with the responsibility. Even though Daniel had a cocker spaniel for years at his place in London, it never seemed right for me. And now – here I am trying to train a cat."

"Uhm, excuse me, but I've done all the 'training' so far!"

"Fair point, Mrs Steele."

"Anyway, don't let it worry you, Mr Steele – it's a cat, that's all; we're not yet talking about your having two point four children, a St Bernard and a Volvo station wagon!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

High up on a hill as they were, a slight breeze provided welcome relief to the heat of the June day as Laura walked along the pathway, following Remington through the beautifully landscaped gardens. They were at the famed Château Marmont Hotel, searching for one of the guest bungalows that were carefully scattered around the grounds, each surrounded by its own mini-garden and sufficient trees and bushes to provide privacy.

Laura was wearing one of her more daring outfits – a lapel-less, three-button Anne Klein business suit, conservative in every way except for its rich purple color. To offset its impact, she had on the simplest of plain white blouses, mid-height black court shoes, simple gold ear studs and her black fedora. Ahead of her, Remington was probably over-dressed for the heat in a charcoal gray, wool business suit, white shirt and plain blue tie. He was wearing Ray-bans because of the bright sunlight.

Having found the bungalow they were looking for, Steele knocked on the door. It was opened by a heavyset, balding, middle aged man dressed in a beige suit. "Mr Rossi?" asked Remington, "Mr Warren Rossi?"

"Correct; and I know that you're Remington Steele. And I assume this must be Mrs Steele? Please come in."

Laura preceded Remington into the luxuriously decorated, but tiny, bungalow. She could see doors leading off of the single living room, no doubt to the bedroom, kitchenette and bathroom. Rossi waved them to seats on the couch, then walked over to the bar.

"Would you like a drink? I've just made mojitos in anticipation of your arrival."

Steele looked at Laura, then nodded, "Thank you, yes – they should be refreshing on such a hot day."

Rossi brought over a tray with three of the cocktails, served them and then settled himself in an armchair. "Thank you for meeting me, Mr Steele. I know such a prestigious agency as yours must have a lot of demands on its time."

"Not at all, Mr Rossi. We're always happy to speak to a potential client referred to us by someone we've helped in the past."

"Sure, sure. I hope you didn't mind that, but I thought I would pull a few strings to ensure you would meet me – and meet me here."

Laura sipped her drink, which was deliciously cool and minty, then asked, "Why are we meeting here, Mr Rossi?"

"Uhm…for reasons of discretion. I didn't want anyone – and I mean anyone – at the company to know that I was thinking of consulting a detective agency." Laura nodded encouragement. "But perhaps if I outline my problem, you'll understand. Do you know anything about gelato – Italian ice cream – Mrs Steele?"

"Not really…except it's nice to eat on a hot day – a day like today, in fact."

"Exactly. My company, Rossi Gelati, is the largest Italian ice cream manufacturer in the country. I'm sure you must have seen our trucks all over the city?"

Laura nodded, the mention of ice cream trucks having brought instant recollection of the name Rossi. Their trucks and carts, dispensing expensive ice cream cups and cones, were a familiar sight in LA's parks and on its beaches for most of the year, but especially during the hot summer months.

"Most Americans, Mr Steele, eat ice cream produced by the national giants – Baskin-Robbins or Dreyer's, for example. And that's fine; but what we produce is in a different league – luxury, traditional Italian gelato, made freshly in our factory in Vernon every day. We use only all natural flavorings and ingredients, real fruit in season, organic milk and no chemicals."

"Hmm, Mr Rossi, I see. You are right, of course – Italians make the best ice creams in the world, without a doubt. I've been lucky enough to try some of them from the finest restaurants and gelaterias in Rome and Florence. I am sure your products are just as good."

Rossi smiled for a second at Steele's flattery. "Thank you, Mr Steele. Anyway, since my father started the company thirty years ago, we've been very successful here in LA. We do of course make cartons of ice cream for the home consumer, but our main market has always been selling ice cream from our carts and trucks. We've got a fleet of, currently, sixty-seven trucks which we send out into the streets for nine or ten months of the year, more or less – except for the depths of winter."

"So, what's your problem, and why is it so hush-hush?" asked Laura.

"Mrs Steele, in the last month, we've been the subject of sabotage on two occasions. I am convinced Rossi Gelati is being targeted by a business rival, and I want you to find out who, and to stop it."

"Tell us about it."

"The first incident was three weeks ago. Someone broke into the compound during the night where we park our ice cream trucks, and slashed the tires of most of them. The next morning was chaotic – I mean, fifty, sixty trucks needed to be jacked up and have one or more tires replaced; we had our drivers, on top of our small team of in-house mechanics, working like crazy. Our trucks, Mrs Steele, carry over eight hundred liters of ice cream on a typical summer day – that's nearly seven thousand dollars at retail prices. Each hour, each minute, that they are not on the streets selling costs the company revenue."

"Could it have been just vandalism?"

"Sure, it could've been. We sell ice cream, we're not Fort Knox. The trucks are parked in a fenced-in compound next to our factory, and we have a security patrol that keeps an eye on things – but anyone could hop over the fence in the dark and attack the vehicles.

"I wasn't sure about the tire slashing, but what happened next was beyond doubt. Last week, somehow, our ice cream was sabotaged inside the factory. Someone put a laxative chemical in the chocolate ice cream; this stuff was then sold in all our trucks for the next day, sometimes two days. We started to get complaints from some customers, especially in those locations where one of our trucks would park and sell every day. People would come up to one of our vendors and complain that they had bought a chocolate scoop from him the previous day – chocolate is the second most popular flavor for ice cream – and that it had made them ill."

"Oh dear," said Remington. "What happened?"

"When I heard about this, I was frantic. For a company in the food sector, any hint of a food poisoning issue can be a death knell. I ordered all our trucks off the road, and had all the remaining chocolate ice cream seized. I sent several batches for analysis at a public health lab. I also ordered all the current batches of ice cream in production to be scrapped and the entire manufacturing machinery to be closed down, cleaned and sterilized.

"We make roughly 50,000 liters of gelato a day, Mr Steele. The cost of taking our production facilities out of commission for nearly two days, and of throwing away all the ice cream that was in the middle of manufacture – well, you can see we are talking about huge numbers here. Another 'accident' of this kind could ruin the company."

Laura looked thoughtful. "Mr Rossi, shouldn't you have informed the authorities?"

"I dreaded any of this becoming public knowledge. But I run an ethical company. If there had been an ongoing problem with food-borne contaminants – like streptococcus or listeria – we would have, of course, informed them. But the problem seemed relatively focused – to chocolate. I took a decision to wait for the lab results. We're just lucky that most customers did not make the connection to their ice cream having been the cause of their illness, and none of them notified the public health authorities."

"You've clearly got a serious problem, Mr Rossi. What did the lab results show?"

"A powerful chemical, calcium polycarbophil – harmless except for its laxative effect – was added to that particular batch of chocolate ice cream."

"No question, it was sabotage, Mr Rossi," Remington pontificated, laying on a little bit of a performance for the client.

"Any suspects?" asked Laura.

"Not as the saboteur. As to who's to blame: our main competitor in Los Angeles – Jingle Dingle Ice Cream."

Steele suppressed a smile at the name. "I've never heard of them, Mr Rossi."

"They're like us to some extent, Mr Steele – they distribute their ice cream via trucks in Los Angeles, and even in a few other west coast cities. We've been in tough competition with them for ten or fifteen years. They're actually bigger than us with more trucks. Of course, I wouldn't say they are in our league – they make pretty regular, American, full fat ice cream – it's much cheaper than ours, nowhere near a luxury product the way our gelato is."

"I see," said Steele. "And have you any reason to suspect them? Any problems in the past, for example?"

"Nothing really. Jingle Dingle have generally always sent their trucks into the Valley, whereas our territory has usually been in LA proper. But that's not a fixed rule – sometimes, when they're on an expansion drive, they will not hesitate to take up pitches in LA and start selling their product. In places like Venice Beach or Santa Monica, you'll find ice cream trucks from both our companies on any summer day. There have been a couple of arguments between one of our drivers and one of theirs a couple of times, but that's nothing really. Our two companies have always been, I thought, in healthy but fair competition."

Steele stood up and walked around the room for a few seconds, running a thumbnail along the line of his jaw, deep in thought. He turned suddenly and took on his most professorial posture as he spoke. "Mr Rossi, I think we can help you, if Laura agrees. You see, in a case like this, the key is that there's obviously someone inside your organization who is the culprit – whomever he ultimately works for. Get the inside man, and the case is cracked!"

"If Laura agrees…so Mrs Steele is the boss, huh?"

"Oh no, Mr Rossi, I'm the boss – but she's in charge," Steele said with a smile.

"I agree," said Laura, also smiling.

Rossi laughed in turn, "Oh, I know how that is, Mr Steele. My wife's in charge as well. Like I always say, I have a wife-style to support!"

"In our case, Mr Rossi," responded an amused Laura, "I have a husband-style to support."


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Steele stood staring out of the window of his office, deep in thought. On a clear summer day like today, when there was none of LA's notorious smog, the view towards the east from Century City was spectacular. The vast sprawl of Los Angeles spread out in front of him, rising in the near distance to the skyscrapers of Bunker Hill and Downtown. In the far distance, the city could be seen giving way to the peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains. No doubt, the view would have been even better from the forty-fourth floor of the building, but even from their offices on the eleventh story, it was magnificent.

The view could not distract him from the feeling of unease that had troubled him since yesterday. He was not sure whether what he was going to do would backfire on him – how Laura would react to it; but he knew that it was the correct thing to do.

Just at that moment, Laura came in from her office through the connecting door. She was wearing a black, Carole Little business suit which ended just above the knee, black high heels without hose, and a tan blouse open at the neck. Her hair was loose, blow dried for volume and brushed back from her forehead. Her only jewelry was a blue, Correia necklace and a pair of simple gold ear studs. Laura saw Steele standing by the window, lost in thought. She walked up to him and linked her arm through his, where his elbows jutted out because he had his hands in his pockets. "Penny for your thoughts, Mr Steele?" she said.

Steele came back to earth, smiled at her and gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. "Has Mildred gone home?"

"Yes. We can leave as well, anytime you're ready."

"Hmm. Listen Laura, you're not in a rush to get home, are you? Can we spare an hour to run an errand?"

"Of course. Is it something to do with the agency? Shall I call Fred to bring the limo?"

"No, no, that's alright. We'll take your car."

"What errand, Remington?"

"Ah, erm…I need to show you something, if that's alright. Everything will become clearer when we get there. Trust me, okay?"

Laura nodded and gave him an easy smile, then went into her office to get her things. Steele put on his jacket, turned off the lights and met her in the outer office, before they locked up and went down to the parking garage and the Rabbit. Remington took the keys from her to drive, and before they left, he put the car's top up, even though it had been a very warm day and the evening would no doubt be likewise.

Steele turned out of Century City, but south rather than north, towards the Santa Monica Freeway, then headed east. Laura could tell Remington was distracted, and he had been driving in near silence for ten minutes since they had left the office, barely responding to her attempts at conversation. "Where are we going?" she tried for the last time.

"Chinatown."

Laura gave up. She flicked on the radio to KROT, her favorite station, and let the pop music distract her as she stared out of the window at the other cars on the freeway. They ground their way on, through the traffic of Downtown, then north past Union Station. However, Remington then turned east, towards a quieter section of the city that Laura did not recognize, full of warehouses and factories interspersed with apartment buildings. The area reminded her a little of the neighborhood where her old building was located. "Where are we?" she asked.

"Dog Town. More officially, this neighborhood is called Mission Junction. Would you believe we're only half a mile from Union Station and Chinatown? It's like a different world, eh?"

Laura, who had grown up in Los Angeles and thought she was familiar with most of it, had never been in this area before and had never heard of it. Steele had pulled into a small maze of streets that formed their own enclave, often ending in a dead end before switching back. Two and three-story, red brick apartment houses fronted the streets. Steele parked the car, turned off the engine and looked around for a minute, before turning to face Laura.

"Why do they call it Dog Town?" she asked.

"It used to be next to the city dog pound, believe it or not. These particular apartments are actually called the William Mead Homes – they are some of LA's oldest public housing."

"What are we doing here, Remington?"

"We have a stop to make. Just wait, and I'll explain everything. Er, Laura – would you mind taking off your hat? It's just that it is a bit conspicuous in this neighborhood," he said, as he took off his tie and undid the top two buttons of his shirt, in an attempt to look more casual.

Laura removed her fedora, then they got out of the car, Remington making doubly sure it was locked, before he led her up the street towards one of the low rise red blocks. "Try and look like you're a debt collector or something," he said, only half in jest.

"Why did you park so far away?" Laura asked. "We're fifty yards away from this building, and there are a lot of parking spaces closer."

"I didn't want to draw attention to the car or to which building we were heading for," he explained, looking around again. "We're in the projects, Laura – we stick out quite a lot already. White people are an unusual sight – this neighborhood is ninety-nine per cent Latino and Asian."

"Is it safe?"

"Uhm…safer than most of the projects. It's not quite South Central, you know. We'll be okay at this time of the day, anyway."

Laura looked around, and could see the typical activities of an early evening residential neighborhood – mothers chatting with their neighbors with small children balanced on their hips, workers arriving home and parking their cars, some kids playing basketball on an area of fenced-in ground. There was no doubt, however, from the run-down look of the place and the modest cars and trucks parked on the streets, that this was a poor neighborhood.

Steele led them up a path and into one of the small, three-story blocks. Laura could see just two apartment doors leading off of the short hallway, and a set of stairs heading up to the next floor. She assumed they would be calling on one of the apartments, when instead, Steele – after again craning his neck around to check if they were being observed – went to the end of the hallway, pulled out a key and entered through an unmarked door, quickly dragging Laura after him. They were in a pitch black room, and Laura was nervous for a second until Remington turned on a flashlight he had with him. Laura looked around – she saw it was a maintenance closet of some kind. It was only about five feet square, with no windows; there were shelves on two sides with cleaning materials, brushes and brooms; some cardboard cartons; and, rather inexplicably, about four or five fire extinguishers standing in one corner. The closet was very dusty.

Laura watched as Remington went into a corner, moved some cartons, and crouched down in front of a panel on the wall which had a red skull-and-crossbones marked on it and a sign saying 'Danger High Voltage'. It was about twelve inches square and looked like an access panel for an electricity junction box. Steele unlocked the panel with a key he had with him, opened it and pulled something out from inside, then summoned Laura over. She saw that he was holding a small, metal money box, of the kind used to store petty cash and other valuables; it was about six inches long and five inches wide. Steele handed her a key and pointed the flashlight at the box, then whispered, "Open it."

Laura was nervous. She opened the box, and pulled out the contents. It contained a bundle of crisp, unused fifty dollar bills tied with a paper tape, what looked like a locker key, a bundle of plastic cards, and two passports in the distinctive dark blue of Great Britain. Laura opened the passports: they contained pictures of Remington and herself, in the names of Geoffrey Carroll and Sally Carroll. The plastic cards were various British IDs for the two of them in the same names – driving licenses, credit cards, social security cards and memberships of the British Airways Frequent Flyers Club. A bizarre thought struck her; "You don't look like a Geoffrey," she said.

Steele stared at her for a few seconds. Then, holding the flashlight between his teeth, he took the passports and other things from Laura and locked them back in the security box, and replaced the box behind the wall panel. He moved the cardboard cartons back into place until the panel was no longer visible. Going to the door and turning off the flashlight, he opened it a couple of inches to check there was no one in the hallway, then stepped out with Laura and locked the closet after them. He and Laura walked out of the building without speaking, climbed into the Rabbit and Steele casually drove away.

Laura had been quiet for some minutes as Steele piloted the Rabbit out of the neighborhood. As Union Station loomed on their right and he turned westwards, back towards home, she spoke. "I suppose that's your getaway cache, is it?" Steele did not reply, but nodded. "So, what movie are the names on the passports from?"

"The Two Mrs Carrolls – Humphrey Bogart and Barbara Stanwyck, Warner Brothers, 1947. Bogart plays a psychopath who kills his first wife, then begins to poison his second wife – played by Stanwyck."

"How very apt," Laura responded softly, causing Steele to look sideways at her before returning his attention to the road; he could sense Laura was not happy. "How long have you had those things hidden there?"

"Oh…six months or so. I had the various IDs made a little while after we got back from London – since that policeman there confiscated my other passports."

"Inspector Lombard – that was his name; Inspector Lombard," Laura said in a flat tone of voice.

"Fine, fine – Inspector Lombard, then."

"Why did you show me that…stash?"

"I though you should see it – know about it."

Suddenly Laura was angry. "What? Show me the means of your escape? The way you'd run out on me? Thanks for nothing!"

Steele, stunned by her sudden change, was plaintive. "No, Laura – God, no! I'm not going to run out on you, I would never run out on you by choice! There were two passports there – one for both of us! That isn't the action of someone planning to bolt, is it?"

"Stop the car."

"Laura. There's no need for this…You're not going to storm off just to make some kind of dramatic gesture, are you? We're still miles away from home."

"Oh, don't be such an idiot! I am not going to storm off – but we need to talk, and if we do it while you're driving, you might crash the car."

Steele pulled over and turned off the engine, then heaved a heavy sigh. He turned to look at Laura, who was silently staring straight ahead, not looking at him.

"Laura?" he said. "Uhm, I realize this has been a little bit of a shock to you. Perhaps I handled it badly. But when I showed you that emergency stash today…I was trying to be honest with you…to not keep any secrets from you. What you've said in the past was that if we were to have a chance in this marriage, we had to be honest with each other – all I was trying to do was to fulfill that promise."

"Fine…So, what a great guy you are, eh Remington? You can pat yourself on the back for being honest with me – six months too late!"

"What do you mean, six months? I don't understand why you are so angry?"

"Why I'm angry? You've had those passports ready for months. You've been hatching a plan – or at least a backup plan if things went wrong, I presume – and you didn't tell me about it! That's why I'm angry! I hate it when you're not honest with me!"

"Look, Laura – I'm not here legally, am I? Or at least, I wasn't until Anthony Roselli fixed my immigration problems. You know that I've led a…sketchy life – I admit it. I have a few enemies out there. And there are, maybe, a couple of police forces who are interested in me – or at least, chaps who look like me with names like Quintain or Fabrini or O'Leary. So, my existence is always a bit…precarious. I have to have, uhm, a backup plan, a way out – that's why I had the ten thousand in cash and those new passports hidden away! Not because I was intending to run out on you – never for that – but if things went wrong, I had a Plan B.

"But the most important, thing, Laura, was that I had a passport and IDs for you as well. If things had gone south, and we had to make a fast getaway, I would have asked you to come with me – I'd have begged and demanded you come with me, actually."

"So you had a contingency plan – but what makes you think I would have come with you? Huh?"

"Er, before…I know I did not have the right to expect it – but I would have hoped that, if we meant something to each other – really meant something – then you might have come with me. We're talking about giving up an entire life here in LA – the place where you were born – I know it's not something that could have been decided on a whim. But remember, because of me, you were a lawbreaker too: you were responsible for procuring my American passport by dishonest means and for aiding and abetting an illegal alien. Those are indictable offenses. I was not sure, if a crisis came and the cops were after us, whether you would have given up your life here – but I, uhm, wanted you to have an option to get out, so I got you a spare passport as well."

Laura suddenly felt hot, and stepped out of the car onto the sidewalk. She leaned against the Rabbit, and watched the still heavy commuter traffic pass by, the drivers oblivious to the parked car and its occupants. Steele got out of the car and came and stood next to her.

"Okay," she said, now calmer. "I suppose I can accept your reasons for having the passports and other IDs made. But why didn't you tell me about this before? I mean, once we'd gotten married, at least? You told me about the Caymans account, so why not tell me about your secret cache at the same time?"

"After we spoke to each other so…openly on our honeymoon, I decided I was going to tell you everything. But we've only been back home for a week, Laura. We've been so busy, it was just a case of finding the right time – I had to show the documents and their hiding place to you, I couldn't just explain it in words, you see?"

"Fine," said Laura, her expression softening. "But tell me, why have you hidden them there, in that out of the way place?"

"I've had too many, er, close shaves in the last few years, Laura. When Descoine set me up the first time, I was on the run and the police had my apartment under surveillance – I couldn't get inside it. And then later, that bugger Norman Keyes simply waltzed into my apartment and found my passports. I realized that I had become lazy, careless – me, who was supposed to be a professional! It was time to start taking proper precautions, and putting into practice the training I've had drummed into me since I was a boy. One of those basic tenets is to always have an escape plan formulated and backup resources available in a secure location."

"Well, it's certainly very…professional and well planned out, I'll give you that."

Steele, sensing Laura's changed mood, now stepped up and hugged her close for a long minute. He looked into her soulful brown eyes – the rage had definitely passed, replaced by the slightly vulnerable inner child. Remington ran his hand across her cheek gently, then kissed her. "Laura – I know I don't have the best track record with you of…being totally straightforward. But I really am trying to live up to what you said in Ireland about being emotionally authentic and committed – I want this marriage to succeed, because we love each other and it would be a tragedy if we messed that up, wouldn't it?"

"I know, Remington, I know. The thing that's hurt us in the past…it's when we haven't been completely honest with each other, you see? Tell me you haven't got any more secrets you're going to spring on me?"

"No more, Laura – that's it. Scout's honor!"


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Cynthia, Warren Rossi's secretary, surreptitiously stared at the man waiting in Mr Rossi's outer office, trying not to be rude but unable to help herself. He was odd. Most definitely odd – almost repulsive.

Tall and thin, what she had noticed about him first was his pallor – so unusual in sunny California. The man also kept sniffing, as if he had a bad cold. Beyond this, what was most appalling about him was his clothes: he was dressed in a bright blue, two piece suit – it was the color of a swimming pool. The material was obviously polyester or maybe even nylon – Cynthia could practically feel the static electricity it gave off. She could see three or four pens sticking out of the top of his outside breast pocket, where a smartly dressed man would have had a handkerchief or pocket square. The man also had black hair that had been plastered to his skull with gel – his hair looked like Pee Wee Herman's. Completing the nerdy look of the visitor were his thick, black plastic glasses and the clipboard that he carried.

What made Cynthia particularly amused was that her badly dressed companion was reading a copy of _GQ_ magazine.

Warren Rossi came out of his inner office, saw the visitor and gave a start – as if he were surprised to see him. But he quickly recovered, and ushered the pale man inside, calling "Hold my calls, Cynthia, while I am with Mr Keech," over his shoulder.

Once in Rossi's office, Remington Steele – for it was he – relaxed the awkward posture he had adopted since arriving at the factory. "Good morning, Mr Rossi," he greeted his client.

"Good morning, Mr Steele," replied Rossi, staring at him as he sat down, not quite able to process that this was the same man that he had met at the Château Marmont Hotel. "Would you like a drink? I have scotch, or maybe a Jack Daniels?"

"Er, no – no thank you, Mr Rossi," replied Steele, startled to be offered alcohol at nine in the morning. He wondered whether the pressure of the sabotage was getting to Rossi. "It's a little early in the day for me."

"Of course. I must say, you look very different, Mr Steele – I almost wouldn't have recognized you."

"That was the idea, Mr Rossi. With all modesty, I have a little fame in Los Angeles – my face has appeared in the newspapers a few times, as you know; so sometimes, it's necessary to disguise my appearance in order to get the job done."

"Sometimes? You've done this kind of thing before?"

"What is life, Mr Rossi, but the playing of roles?"

"I suppose so. What's your exact plan, Mr Steele? All you said on the telephone was that I should expect you here today, posing in an undercover role, and play along."

"My idea is that you should introduce me around as Trevor Keech, private environmental health consultant, whom you've personally brought into the company to inspect things. Everyone here knows about the chocolate ice cream contamination – even if most of the staff do not know it was sabotage – correct?"

"That's right, Mr Steele. Only the senior company executives know what happened with the laxative: the deputy chief executive, Richard Rossi, who is my cousin, and the heads of the legal, trucking, purchasing, food science and manufacturing departments. Of course, everyone in the place knows about the tire slashing, and there is a lot of gossip around that we've been the target of sabotage – but only these senior people in the company know the full truth. And none of them know who you are or about your agency's involvement."

"Good. Any one of these senior executives could be the inside man, Mr Rossi – even your cousin. Of course, I'll admit it is more probable that the person doing the grunt work, like slashing tires in the middle of the night, is some sort of blue collar chap who is, erm…familiar with that kind of thing. But in my experience, one should never make assumptions about who or what a criminal might be – the tire slashing could easily have been done by a university-educated executive type, or even a woman."

"I understand Mr Steele. I find it hard to believe any of my colleagues could be involved, but I trust your judgment."

"Excellent! You see, I want to understand the relationships here and get a feel for the company. So, introduce me to the key people and tell them that after the contamination scare, you've hired me to make a full assessment of your food safety. It will be the perfect cover story – I can go anywhere and talk to any of the employees and they'll believe I have full authority to look into all aspects of the business."

"Very clever, Mr Steele. I can see your reputation as the best is deserved," said Rossi. Steele smiled at the compliment.

He and Rossi went out to the executive floor, where he was introduced to the senior management. Rossi played his part to perfection, making it clear that 'Trevor Keech' was to have _carte blanche_ to look over the entire place in a tone that brooked no protest even from his top people.

All the senior managers were men, and Steele met all of them in turn. He could tell that, with his slightly hunched over posture and nasal accent, all of them immediately assumed he was a fool and that Rossi's bringing him in had been a misjudgment. Steele was happy with that – it was always better to be underestimated than overestimated, as it meant people often let down their guard.

Richard Rossi, the deputy chief executive, was a man of medium height in his thirties. He looked like a younger, slimmer version of his cousin. He greeted Steele with an offhand air, as though with one look at Trevor Keech, he had dismissed his cousin's choice of food safety inspector as hopeless. "Good morning, Mr Keech – though I am not sure what you can achieve. I just hope that your assessment won't affect our operations today – we are very busy here, you know."

"Of course, of course," replied Steele nasally. "I'll try not to get in your way."

"See that you don't. Warren, why wasn't I told about this? We shut down production for two days to clean all the machines, so why do we need to bring in an environmental health consultant? No doubt he's charging the company a fortune in fees?"

"Richard, we need to know how that chocolate was contaminated – Mr Keech here might be able to spot any health code violations or other problems in our production processes," replied Warren Rossi warily.

"Nonsense, Warren! We've been making gelato here for over thirty years, and we've never had a food poisoning scare – ever! You know and I know what happened with that batch of chocolate."

Steele, pretending ignorance, jumped into the conversation. "Oh, what was that Mr Rossi?" he asked, with a loud sniff for emphasis.

"I'll leave that to Warren to fill in – after all, it was his idea to bring you in, so he will have to decide how much information to reveal to you, Mr Keech," said Richard Rossi dismissively. He turned towards his cousin, and pulled him aside for a whispered conversation – Steele couldn't hear what about. As the two Rossis were speaking to each other, Steele could discern the tension in their body language – he wondered whether they had always had a difficult relationship or whether there was a newfound stress since the sabotage had begun. Perhaps everyone in the company was, quite naturally, feeling under pressure?

Over the rest of the day, Steele was given an overview in turn by all the executives into each one's area of responsibility.

The head of purchasing, a man named Alexander Connally, showed him the procedures that Rossi Gelati used to buy-in and transport its raw materials, from submitting orders to their suppliers right through to the delivery of the goods to the factory. The vice president in charge of trucking, Charles Lattimore – whose job was to run the fleet of Rossi's ice cream trucks – showed Steele around the small garage where in-house repairs were conducted, and the much larger depot next to the factory where the ice cream trucks parked up at night. Steele was able to confirm for himself the truth of Warren Rossi's observation about the minimal security at the truck depot: one guard hut at the entrance to the depot, with two men inside, neither of whom ever left the hut to go on patrol.

Always taking notes on his clipboard, sniffing as if he had a cold, and with his nasal accent, Steele tried to make himself appear as unprepossessing as possible. Steele had been playing roles for most of his life, sometimes just as a way of preventing anybody getting too close, but at other times as a job – especially when working on the big con. Creating a character, getting down and dirty and losing himself in the role, was part of the appeal for him of the profession he had inadvertently discovered as a boy – or which had discovered him through the agency of Daniel Chalmers. Steele was not a man much given to introspection or self-analysis, but he had realized as a young man that the appeal of the big con for him had as much to do with the thrill of it – the challenge of the planning and the adrenaline of playing a part – as it did with money. Steele had never done anything just for money – his life had always been driven by the next adventure, by a quest for sensation – by whatever might stave off boredom.

However, today even he questioned if he had overdone it with his 'Trevor Keech' persona – the posture, the sniffing and the nasal twang were perhaps overkill in terms of creating a believable character. Nevertheless, Steele was able to get most employees talking – from the blue collar ice cream truck drivers, of whom there were about sixty in total, although most of them were out on their routes for most of the day – through to the extremely cautious lawyers who worked under the head of the legal department, William Fishback.

As Warren Rossi had mentioned, once they opened up, the employees poured out their theories about the sabotage – for even the lowliest member of staff had heard about the laxative incident. No one that Steele could find in the company, from top to bottom, was in any doubt that Rossi Gelati was being targeted by an enemy – and there were a dozen theories about who it might be.

Steele noticed, during his tour of Rossi Gelati, that the internal security of the place was minimal; staff had to show their IDs at the main gate, but once they were inside the factory compound, almost everybody was free to go wherever they wished.

By mid-afternoon, he was feeling rather run down. Several hours of fake sniffing and being slightly hunched over could have that effect. He was being shown around the factory floor by the vice president of manufacturing, the childishly named Bobby Rudner, who was in charge of making the gelato in the sterile production area of the factory. He was talked through the manufacturing process – how the milk was first pasteurized for safety reasons, then cooled, then churned and frozen with sugar and flavorings inside massive, stainless steel freezer-churn machines.

Steele was left on his own to wander around the factory floor, talking as he pleased to any of the workers manning the enormous machines. He strolled up to a door marked 'Fire Exit', which he noticed was neither locked nor alarmed; he pushed it open and gave a cursory glance through it – it led to a blank corridor which ended in another door marked 'Exit', but this one had a lock. Steele was just about to turn away when he noticed something odd; moving down the short corridor, he looked at the fire extinguisher that was mounted on the wall next to the second door. The plastic security tape holding the extinguisher in place had been broken, as if the extinguisher had been used but not refilled and this had not been picked up during the last fire safety inspection. This was the probability, of course – a full, unused extinguisher should have had the little plastic seal on it which broke automatically if the extinguisher was actually pulled away from the wall.

Steele was surprised – this was the first anomalous fire extinguisher he had seen in the entire factory. Rossi Gelati appeared very efficient, and its fire procedures were well up to, or exceeded, the requirements of the code. Steele put his fingers to his mouth and started stretching his bottom lip repeatedly, a sign that he was deep in thought.

Taking out his lock picks, he glanced around to make sure no one else was in the corridor, then bent and picked the lock. If this were a fire exit, he half expected the fire alarm to begin as he took a deep breath and pushed the door open – but nothing happened: there was no alarm. Steele stuck his head through the door – he saw that it led directly outside, and he stepped through it.

He realized that he was at the back of the factory, in a very quiet area; there was no one else about. What had appeared to be an official fire exit from the factory floor was, in fact, poorly signed, unalarmed and led to a small alleyway at the back of the building. Steele glanced around – the rear fence of the Rossi factory was just yards away. Through the chain link, he could see a street – it must be the parallel street to the one which Rossi's fronted onto. There was a small gate in the fence, which was locked closed with a chain and padlock; the padlock showed obvious evidence of being oiled and well used, and was in no way rusty.

It looked like somebody had been coming and going through this small, anonymous rear gate.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

As Laura opened the door to the apartment and entered ahead of him, Steele was turning over in his mind the information he had picked up while he had posed as an environmental health inspector. It seemed that they had made only a little progress in the case so far. The Rossi factory's security was loose, to say the least, and with all of the company's hundred or more employees able to access all areas at any time, their list of suspects was now longer than it had been when the case started.

Steele removed the jacket of his dark blue two-piece suit, loosened his burgundy knitted wool Drakes of London tie and rolled up the sleeves of his white, French cuffed Turnbull & Asser shirt; it was still hot, even though it was now evening. Laura was opening the terrace doors to let Nero back inside. Steele sat on the couch. "Another day, another dollar, eh?" he said cheerfully.

"It is nice to be…home," answered Laura, sitting down in what was becoming her usual spot on the couch next to him.

"Does it feel like home, Laura? What I mean is…are you missing the loft? I realize this has been quite a wrench for you – having to move into my place."

Laura reached out and took Remington's hand. "I'm fine, really; your place has always been like a second home for me, anyway – I've spent so much time here. I'll settle in quickly – so don't worry. And so will Nero!"

Steele rose and started off towards the kitchen, calling "I'll make dinner," over his shoulder to Laura. She watched him go; this had become a pattern in the week or so that they had been back in LA and had settled into 'married life'. Invariably, once they got home after work, Remington preferred to make dinner or watch a movie or read before he ever changed his clothes, whereas Laura usually couldn't wait to hit the shower and wash away the stresses and strains of the day. She recognized how wonderful it was to have someone magically rustle up amazing meals of an evening, given how tired she often was when she got home from work.

But today, for a change, she wanted to be with Remington, especially as the memory of their fight was still fresh in her mind. The argument over the passports was supposed to have blown itself out in the car, but when they had returned home, Laura had been remote through dinner and for the rest of the evening; as hard as she had tried, her fears of abandonment – irrational fears, she knew – had troubled her. Later, in bed, they had made love a little desperately, as if trying to apologize to each other physically rather than with words.

Laura now regretted her loss of temper somewhat. She had vowed to herself that she did not want to always be nagging Remington – did not want to become like her mother – about telling the truth. Laura had been trying to deliberately force herself to trust him, over big things and small; she knew she had to trust him if their marriage was to survive. A memory came to her of an occasion when she and Remington had been riding on a steel girder being lifted by a crane, on a case where they had had to help a Federal Reserve employee who had been framed. Laura had slipped and it was Remington who had saved her from falling to her death. Laura trusted him with her life, with the agency and with money – what she wasn't sure yet that she trusted him with was her heart – that he would always be there for her and always need her.

She removed the dark pink jacket of her two-piece Escada business suit and her black suede high heels, then went into the kitchen. "There's no point getting into a routine," she said, standing next to Remington and holding his upper arm as she watched him working at his cutting board; "I thought I'd help you prepare dinner – or at least, watch what you were doing."

Remington smiled at Laura warmly, then stopped chopping and turned and put his arms around her waist, giving her a playful kiss; Laura put her arms around his neck and reciprocated. "Always a pleasure to spend time with you, Mrs Steele," he said. "Let me show you something." Steele disentangled himself from Laura, much to her regret, and went to the refrigerator to fetch a bottle of white wine, which he handed over to her before resuming his chopping.

"Château Moulin Caresse," she read. "Montravel – I'm not familiar with it?"

"It's a Bergerac wine – very similar to a Bordeaux, which is right next door, but much more reasonably priced. Dry but with a real fruitiness. Why don't you open it, eh?"

Laura opened the wine and poured them a couple of glasses, then watched Steele as he worked. He was messing around with a chopstick, digging it into the end of some large meat bones. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"Hmm? Oh, just extracting the marrow from these beef shins which my butcher gave me. I was going to make a risotto for our dinner, and the traditional foundation for it in Italy is melted bone marrow – although extracting the stuff can be a nuisance."

"Risotto? Oh, now I've made a risotto before! Unfortunately, it came out like a rock hard brick of rice – but I have made one," Laura said with a wan smile.

Remington chuckled at her self-deprecation, then took a swig of his drink. "Hm, you really want to help? Then would you mind cleaning and chopping up those mushrooms for me?"

Laura nodded, then began to clean a selection of wild mushrooms which Remington had laid out on the counter with a brush. She recognized the bright yellow, funnel-shaped chanterelles and the sponge-like morel mushrooms, but there were another two or three types of exotic fungi which she had never seen before. "I am guessing you're making a mushroom risotto, then? Where did you get the wild mushrooms from?"

"It's not strictly the best season for wild mushrooms, but I picked these up at the Grand Central Market – or at least, Fred picked them up on my behalf."

"I haven't been there in years," Laura said wistfully.

Steele took a copper pan and melted the bone marrow, then began to sauté a finely-chopped shallot in the fat along with a clove of crushed garlic. Once Laura had finished chopping the wild mushrooms, he added those into the pan as well. Laura wandered out of the kitchen and returned a few seconds later with a manila folder; she hopped up to sit on the kitchen counter and watched her husband. Remington had added carnoroli rice to the pan and some of the white wine – which he boiled off using a high heat – before he lowered the burner to its lowest setting and began to add chicken stock ladle-by-ladle to the risotto from a second pan which was gently bubbling away on the stove top.

"Do you mind if we talk about the case? Since we have some time to kill?" Laura asked.

"No, no…please go ahead," answered Steele, stirring the risotto somewhat manically.

"Well, Mildred put together a standard workup on Jingle Dingle Ice Creams Limited. So…it is a publicly listed company, still independent, although it has been tipped for a takeover by one of the food industry giants for quite a while. The company is currently valued at approximately thirty million dollars. It was originally formed in San Diego in 1964 by two guys known as Dick and Marty; the company originally had an alternative or hippy-type image – hence the founders insisting that everyone address them by their first names. Full names: Richard 'Dick' Malmgren and Martin 'Marty' Wimble…"

"Wimble? What a strange name!"

"Yes, it's almost as weird as Remington, eh?" Laura laughed, as Remington stared at her balefully. "Anyway, the company grew rapidly after its foundation, directly competing with national players like Mister Softee. It spread into Los Angeles and a few other west coast cities, and has been a success story up to this point. Although the company was listed, the two founders still own fifty-one per cent of the shares and are therefore in control of the company. The market report on Jingle Dingle gives it a clean bill of health – no excessive borrowing, no hint of cooking the books, no problems at all with the USDA or FDA. All the investment banks and brokers recommend it as a well run, honest company – albeit one in an industry which might struggle in future as people become health conscious, and in which the revenues can be very seasonal and therefore uncertain."

Remington, still stirring his risotto continuously, said, "If Warren Rossi thinks Jingle Dingle are responsible for the sabotage, then it would have to be these guys, er...Dick and Marty, who are behind it – they are still the majority owners and very much the bosses of the outfit."

"Agreed. I think we should pay them a visit," said Laura, pouring herself another glass of wine.

"Uh-huh. But you know, Laura, something I said to Warren Rossi when we met him gave me an idea. I said we were looking for an inside man, meaning the agent provocateur – but what if the sabotage is being orchestrated by someone inside Rossi Gelati as well? Who might be the mastermind behind it all, eh?"

Laura turned to another set of papers in her folder, and began to read. "Well, in that case, we would have a much bigger range of suspects. There would obviously be the senior managers that you met. And…Mildred's workup on Rossi Gelati…Founded by Arturo Rossi along with two of his brothers in the early 1950s, it is currently listed on the Pacific Stock Exchange. The company is owned by a diffuse range of shareholders, with the biggest outside investor being a well known Los Angeles entrepreneur called William Chizzet – he has about ten per cent of the company. The Rossi family still owns fifty per cent of the shares – there's one of Arturo's brothers surviving from the first generation, then there's Warren Rossi, who is the largest shareholder of all with fourteen per cent of the company, plus his brother and sister, and then four cousins as well who are descended from Arturo's two brothers."

"Quite a vipers' nest, eh?" said Remington, pouring another ladle of stock into his risotto. "If this plot against the company is an inside job, we'll have a hell of a lot of suspects – six non-family executives, plus eight members of the family involved with the business in some way or another."

"Yes, it makes the case a lot more complicated. But I don't understand why you would suspect someone in the company itself would want to drive Rossi out of business? What motive could there be?"

"Ah…family rivalry, perhaps? If one of them doesn't like the way Warren Rossi is running things, what better way to discredit him than with a campaign of sabotage? Maybe one of the siblings or cousins has designs to take over as chief executive, particularly Richard Rossi? Or perhaps one of the family is hoping to hurt the company just enough that it is forced to give up its independence and be taken over by one of the Fortune 500 multinationals – the share price would undoubtedly go through the roof in the event of a takeover and all the shareholders would be in for a big payday."

"Hmm…I can see where you're coming from; it is potentially a can of worms. We have to approach this investigation logically, though, or we'll be snowed under with all the possibilities: so let's focus first on the most likely suspect – which is Jingle Dingle."

"Agreed. Erm, could you do me a favor please, Laura? There are some chestnuts there – would you mind chopping them up a little and frying them with salt and pepper in some butter? I can't leave this risotto, I'm afraid – cannot stir from this spot!" Laura gave him a pained look in response to his pun, then hopped off the counter and looked at the foil vacuum pack of pre-cooked chestnuts. She set to work.

A few minutes later, when the risotto looked smooth and creamy, Steele turned off the stove. "Well, I think it's done – finally! I'll tell you something Laura, making a risotto really builds up the arm muscles from all that stirring. Now – _mantecare_: a mix of extra butter and grated parmesan, stirred into the risotto at the end for added richness, eh?"

"Oh my God!" said Laura, staring at what seemed to be a massive quantity of butter and cheese, "I don't know about added richness, but it is certainly going to have added calories. That'll go straight onto my hips, Remington! And not to mention, straight into your arteries!"

"Not to worry, Laura – you can run it off at your next triathlon."

Laura looked at him skeptically. "So, shall we eat your calorific confection, then?"

"Let's eat, Mrs Steele," he replied. Taking two plates that had been warming in the oven, he served the risotto and garnished it with Laura's gently sautéed chestnuts. Remington carried the plates out to the dining room, as Laura followed with the wine bottle and glasses, and they dined.

"I think," said Steele in between mouthfuls, "that we need to continue undercover at the Rossi factory, since that is where, in the end, the sabotage is occurring and where we're likely to catch the culprit."

"I wouldn't disagree. Hmm…this risotto is lovely – my compliments to the chef!" said Laura, savoring her husband's culinary creation.

"Thank you, Laura. What I had in mind was that one of us should get a job at the place. It'll allow us a perfect pretext to, uhm, be there continuously and not just to pop in and out for one day like I did yesterday. And to wander around and investigate without arousing suspicion."

"Since they know your face already, you really mean me, don't you?" asked Laura, sipping her wine. "You are suggesting I work undercover at the factory for as long as it takes to turn something up. It's a bit hit-and-miss, isn't it?"

"No, no – I disagree, Laura. From my investigation there, we already know a few facts. Firstly, after I was walked through the production process, it was obvious that from the way that the laxative chemical was used – we're talking about a couple of quarts or so of a highly-concentrated white powder – that it could only have been added to the tanker of milk that is delivered to the factory every day, or to the pasteurizing machine at the beginning of the ice cream making process."

"It sounds quite technical."

"Er, not really – making ice cream is pretty straightforward: churn milk, sugar and flavoring together while slowly freezing the mixture. From what I saw, at Rossi, most of the gelato making processes were more or less automated and the machines were sealed closed. The sabotage could only have happened at one of those two points where there are vulnerabilities in the process. But if the laxative was in the milk tanker, then all the flavors would have been affected; given that it was only chocolate involved means that the laxative must have been added into the milk being pasteurized for the chocolate ice cream. And that means the saboteur was definitely inside the factory."

"Hmm…a logical conclusion, Mr Steele – I'm impressed," said Laura, looking at him with a smile of appreciation, as Steele preened inside.

"Thank you for the compliment, Mrs Steele," he replied, trying to be offhand but unable to stop himself grinning. "But there's more. It was clear to me that there could be no sabotage during the working day at the pasteurizing machines – there are simply too many employees around and the perpetrator was sure to have been spotted. I'm convinced the laxative was added after everyone had gone home. The security at the factory when it's closed is minimal – I mean, your grandmother could walk in and out of that place without alerting those so-called watchmen."

"So some person or persons with at least a few skills in breaking and entering were able to get into the place; which implies that, if they could do it once, they could do it again?"

"Ha! Exactly!" cried Steele, clapping his hands for emphasis. "But I'm sure, from that fire extinguisher, that our man – or woman – works alone and got inside through the fire exit and the rear factory gate. They used the fire extinguisher to prop the door open, hence breaking the plastic seal."

"Yes – that was an excellent piece of observation. You know, if you're right that they're working alone, it also implies that they knew their way around – knew which part of the production process to target," said Laura, with a frown of concentration.

"Uh-huh, precisely. But isn't it really interesting – based on your inference that the saboteur knew their way around the production line – that our criminal didn't simply go in and cause random damage, eh? If they had wanted to, they could have started a fire and closed down the whole company with relative ease; but no – instead they just did enough to damage Rossi Gelati, its revenues and its reputation."

"Yes, of course! Suddenly, your theory that it might be an insider looks more possible: if Jingle Dingle wanted to put Rossi out of competition, they would do the maximum damage they could – such as a really bad fire. But if an insider wanted to disrupt the company, without actually causing the business to completely fail – then they'd do something specific and targeted – like putting laxative in the chocolate flavor!"

"Like I said before – a vipers' nest, Mrs Steele."

"Oh, I agree. From what you've come up with, I guess I should definitely go in there undercover. It was brilliant deduction, Remington – I really mean it," said Laura, smiling at her partner.

Steele chuckled sardonically. "There was a time, Laura, when you used to be jealous if I figured out a clue; how things have changed, eh?"

"Jealous – me? Never. I could never be so petty, Mr Steele!"

"Erm – remember when I traced the fingerprints before you, that time that your building caught on fire? Oh-ho, you were ready to murder me with jealousy, as I recall. And when I discovered the killer at Murphy's college reunion before you?"

"That was a draw! We tied!" said Laura, pretending to be more piqued than she was. Then she laughed, and Remington started to laugh along with her. "Okay, okay! I admit that maybe – just maybe – there was a little rivalry between us in the past, but that's over these days. We're a team now – and we need to be, as it looks like this is going to be quite a tricky case to solve."

"Indeed, Mrs Steele. Now, would you like some dessert? We have ice cream!"


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

Remington Steele closed the apartment door and threw himself down on the couch. He glanced towards Laura as she sat down next to him. Steele took off his yellow and black-striped, J. Press silk tie and, feeling in need of a pick-me-up, strolled over to the drinks trolley. He poured himself an 'Irish and water' – a Bushmills whiskey mixed with water and drunk in the European way – the proper way – without ice. "Do you want a drink, Laura?" he asked.

Laura appeared distracted. "Uhm, no thank you."

Steele returned to his seat. "Well, maybe I should make dinner, hmm? I'm happy to wait and use the bathroom later, if you want to have a shower right away."

Laura glanced at her gold Omega watch, which showed the time as a quarter of six. "It's a little early, wouldn't you say? I think I might go for a run, if you don't mind. I haven't been out since Sunday. Could you do me a favor and open the terrace doors so that Nero can come in – he's been outside all afternoon since Maria left."

"Of course, of course."

Laura hopped up, collected her things and disappeared into the bedroom. She appeared a few minutes later dressed in her running clothes and wearing a white sweatband around her forehead. She touched Remington's shoulder reassuringly as she walked past the couch and went out of the apartment.

She hailed a greeting to the two concierges in the foyer as she exited the Rossmore building, setting off at a gentle warm up trot. She turned left and then left again, heading behind their building and into the streets on the east side of Hancock Park. Once she had crossed the slightly busier Larchmont Boulevard and had warmed up, she checked her watch, and then began to run at the steady training pace which she used for the 10 kilometer triathlons she entered.

Laura was able to shut off half her mind as she pounded the affluent streets around Hancock Park, although she kept a careful eye open for traffic whenever she had to cross a street. She watched the evening routines in the traditional homes that made up the neighborhood. Men and women arriving home from the day's work, a few schoolchildren playing in front yards or shooting hoops in driveways, a teenage girl – maybe a newly qualified driver – washing an old car in the reddening sunlight. Occasionally, Laura looked northwards and could see the Hollywood sign in the far distance.

The area, with its quiet, safe, tree lined streets, was certainly different from her old neighborhood, and she could see its attractions.

She felt that she had to have another discussion with Remington about their living arrangements, but it was a case of finding the right moment. After their return to LA, they had quickly decided to move into his apartment permanently; whenever they now found some spare time, they would head over to her loft to sort through her belongings, deciding what she had to have with her at the apartment and what was dispensable. They had talked about canceling the lease on her place and putting her belongings into storage, although the irreversibility of that step scared her. She was now slowly adjusting to living in what was a new home – even though it was a place that was so familiar to her. But another part of her felt that they needed more space, and she sometimes found herself irritated when something in the apartment was not arranged the way she would have arranged it, or when one of her possessions was not within easy reach because it was still at her loft.

She was aware that demanding more living space probably sounded very spoiled from one perspective; as a couple, she and Remington were well off compared to millions of people in this city, and lived in a three-and-a-half-room, luxury condo in an affluent neighborhood. But the truth was that two single people were now trying to fit their lives together, and some adjustments were needed. Laura wanted a vanity or dressing table of her own, and would have liked to get a desk or a room equipped as a study; at the moment, she had to lay out her paperwork on the dining room table. She didn't even want to think about what to do with her piano.

The problem was that she and Remington had been so busy since their return, that there had been no time for any contemplation, for talking. Apart from a week that they had had together in Ireland, after the madness was over, after Tony Roselli has been exonerated and Mildred had been sent home to LA, she and Remington had had almost no time for themselves.

They had plunged back into work, clearing the backlog of inquiries at the agency. And in their private time, they had visited her mother in Chico, and there had been the usual social engagements to attend, as befitted someone of Remington Steele's fame in the city, and they had had to visit Laura's sister, and they had had to sort through Laura's belongings at the loft, and…and…

…the truth was, they were both avoiding talking about things too deeply.

There was no point in denying it, really. While everything had been frantic, not least her honeymoon, Laura had deliberately denied herself too much thinking space – had avoided analyzing the events of the last few weeks too closely. They both had. She and Remington had reached an unspoken agreement to try and get along. She knew he had been on his best behavior since they had consummated their relationship – as had she. Laura had been swept along on the wave of events, reacting to situations and not letting herself reflect too much on her feelings. She knew that if she allowed herself to think, some of her feelings about that day would come exploding to the surface.

That day! Laura glanced at the date on her Omega, realizing that it was exactly five weeks since they had been married: Thursday 8th May, 1986. At her angriest, Laura had called it the worst day of her life. Maybe she had been exaggerating, but she was not sure. The day she had been married on a fishing boat! Subconsciously, Laura began to pound the pavement harder, until she noticed and forced herself to return to her normal running pace.

She was uncomfortably aware that she still had a lot of buried resentment – deliberately buried – about Mr Steele's shenanigans that day. She had repressed her feelings; it was the right thing to do, for now.

As she thought about the subsequent time, Laura realized that her cautious, analytical nature had been battling the spontaneous, wild side of her character. She had decided to roll with events, to allow the chips to fall where they may. Both of them had implicitly agreed to stick to their code of _omerta_ – to not talk too much about that crazy period of fake weddings, INS agents, spies, duplicitous ex-girlfriends and insurance scams. They had both agreed to plow on ahead, to take their relationship forward – his confessions about money and passports had been in that vein. And of course, she did love Remington Steele; she just wasn't sure she could ever trust him fully, or ever be able to relax completely around him.

Laura had never thought very much about the institution of marriage, in abstract terms, but she idly wondered whether other women – her sister, or Mildred when she had been married – had ever felt the sense of calm and peaceful acceptance that Laura did not. What was the point of a marriage – any marriage – if a woman didn't get reassurance from her husband that life was easier together than alone, but instead, marriage was a sequence of waiting on tenterhooks in case things went wrong?

Carried along by her thoughts, Laura glanced at her watch and noted she had been running properly for forty minutes. She was sweating and tired, but felt good, and had maintained her training pace without too much difficulty. She calculated she had done four miles. Time to go home. Home!

She ran past the Van Ness Park children's playground, then turned herself westwards, heading for the massive bulk of the El Royale apartment block and her own building on Rossmore Avenue, both of which loomed over the low rise family homes that made up most of the neighborhood.

Laura entered the apartment, to find Remington in what was a very typical pose for him, on the corner of the couch closest to the fireplace, his left elbow on the arm of the couch, his long legs crossed at the ankles and propped on the curved black coffee table. He had changed into a pair of black pants, a black, lightweight cashmere sweater with a pale mustard colored shirt underneath, and laced, leather shoes. Bar the sweater, he looked barely less formal than he would have at the office; even Remington's casual clothing tended towards the luxurious and traditional. He was reading a book when she came in.

"Hi. I see you've changed?" she greeted him.

"Hello. I took the chance to grab a shower early. How was your run?"

"Oh, excellent. Four miles at ten-minutes-per-mile average speed. But I'm all tired and sweaty now."

"Well, I'll start dinner."

"Let me cook; you've made dinner – and even breakfast – pretty much every day since we got back. It's only fair. I'll grab a quick shower and get right to it."

Remington rose and, seemingly unbothered that Laura was hot and perspiring, gave her a one-armed, half-hug and kissed her. "Not to worry, eh? You take it easy, and I'll whip up something in a jiffy."

With that, he disappeared into the kitchen.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

Eight-thirty in the morning was, in the opinion of Remington Steele, rather a godforsaken time to have to be at work. Steele was not a morning person – he knew that. But duty called, and so now he found himself opening up the office of Remington Steele Investigations for the second day in succession. He smiled a smile of amusement at himself – there had only been a handful of occasions during the last four years when he had been the first person into the office.

Steele was dressed for the summer weather in a custom made, mid-blue alpaca two piece suit, a white cotton-and-linen mix shirt from Charvet in Paris, and a dark blue silk tie with a pattern of tiny stars, worn with a collar bar.

Suddenly, a memory came to him of the very first time he had ever come to 'work' – he had been the first one that day as well. It had been immediately after the Hunter Case had ended; no one had been around when he had arrived, and so he had picked the lock and ensconced himself in Remington Steele's chair, ready to take a meeting with a client named Lester Giddons – much to the surprise of Laura and Bernice when they had walked into the office a few minutes before nine o'clock.

Steele collected the milk and mail that had been left just outside the door and, turning on lights as he went, entered the utility room, switched on the coffee machine, deposited the milk in the refrigerator and powered up the Toshiba photocopy machine. Next, he dialed the agency's answering service and told them to stop taking calls; with the phone lines now live, he diverted them through to the extension in his office. Steele sorted through the mail, dropping various letters on both Laura's and Mildred's desks. Finally, he poured himself a coffee and sat at his desk, with the door open in case anyone came in. It was a lot more energetic than his usual morning routine, which typically involved nothing more than coffee and a newspaper – but he felt he hadn't managed too badly without Laura or Mildred around.

And where were Laura and Mildred?

They were currently at the Rossi factory, posing as two temporary ice cream vendors, who had been hired to take out a couple of Rossi ice cream trucks for the high season. Since eight o'clock, they had been mingling with sixty or more other drivers, while their trucks were filled with hundreds of liters of fresh gelato and fueled up. Then, the drivers would head out of the depot to their pre-planned route or designated parking spot, where they would stop and open up for business.

This was the second day that Laura and Mildred had been undercover, hoping to get to know the company and its staff, and to observe its working procedures – and the second day that Remington had been left to 'mind the store'.

Steele checked his personal mail – something which Mildred usually did first. He had been surprised yesterday by how much mail he received; it was clear that on a normal day, Mildred or Laura must have weeded out large amounts of it. Again this morning, it was voluminous: there were social invitations, requests to sit on charitable committees or to make donations, invitations to give speeches at various public events, letters from local councilmen and other politicians, a request from a local school to preside at its graduation ceremonies, and of course, about half-a-dozen letters from potential clients outlining their problems.

Sipping his coffee, he enjoyed a relatively peaceful half-hour reading the Los Angeles Times, which was the usual mixture of Los Angeles politics, national stories and drive-by shootings. One story that caught his professional's eye – or perhaps it was his former professional's eye – was on an inside page, and reported the theft from a Los Angeles auction house of one of the nineteen remaining original copies of Bach's Goldberg Variations; it had been, according to the newspaper, 'a daring robbery'.

Soon after nine, the telephone began to ring quite regularly, interrupting his perusal of the newspaper. Steele bore the telephone calls patiently, thinking with one part of his mind how domesticated he had become. Some calls were administrative – one from the agency's bank, another from the lady who came in to look after their plants. Others came from potential clients; some were scared, others very cautious and unwilling to reveal their names, and usually they all included a question about how much the agency charged.

Steele spent the morning on desk work, reviewing the detailed schematics of a security system at a Beverly Hills mansion which the agency was supervising the design and installation of. By one o'clock, he had had enough; with the security schematics thoroughly reviewed to his satisfaction, he decided to go to lunch. He transferred the telephones back to the answering service, closed the office and descended to his Auburn in the parking garage.

He drove to West Hollywood, and had a chopped liver sandwich and a couple of knishes at Greenblatt's, a Jewish deli that was one of the oldest restaurants in Los Angeles. It appealed to his sense of the traditional to eat at a place that had been around since the days of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton – which counted as a long time in a city that renewed and remade itself as frequently as Los Angeles. Steele then made his way downtown, just south of the Stack, to the Los Angeles Music Center.

It was a sunny Friday afternoon, and the central plaza of the Music Center was quite busy – office workers taking a break, children in school parties and tourists checking out the attractions. A Rossi Gelati truck was parked on a slip road off of Hope Street, just next to the central plaza. Steele, wearing Wayfarers, approached the ice cream truck from the blind side and suddenly popped his face in front of the serving window. "I hope you have a permit to sell here?" he asked, in an official sounding voice.

Laura was standing inside waiting for customers, dressed in the garish uniform of Rossi Gelati: a bright red shirt with very large white polka dots on it, a reverse pair of white pants with large red polka dots, and a bright red derby hat. Her uniform's colors reminded Steele a little of Ronald McDonald. She jumped at his sudden appearance, then smiled in recognition, "Hello, what are you doing here?"

"Just checking up on my favorite gelato seller, Mrs Steele. I must say, that's a very fashionable ensemble you're wearing – red and white polka dots are the thing this season, are they?"

"Oh, don't, please! This isn't a bad job on a nice, sunny day like today – but this uniform! Why is that I always end up in a silly costume?

"Ah – it must be something in your playful personality, Laura."

"One of these days Remington, I'm going to make sure you're dressed in the strange outfit."

"Something in leather, or rubber, perhaps? With the odd chain here and there?"

"Ha! You'll be lucky, Mr Steele," said Laura. "Why don't you come inside and we can talk." She opened the back door and let Steele inside, then closed the serving window. "Oh, that's better," she said, sitting down on a stool.

"Has it been very busy? On your feet all day?" asked Remington, leaning against one of the freezers.

"No, not that busy – but it's Friday, so definitely more so than yesterday."

"Well, I have a gift for you," said Remington, presenting Laura with a brown paper bag. "I wondered if you had had a chance to have lunch, so I brought you one of Greenblatt's finest – a Reuben sandwich."

"Thank the Lord!" exclaimed Laura, practically grabbing the bag from him. "I'm starving – I've been stuck in a truck with thousands of dollars worth of ice cream all morning, but there wasn't anything I could actually eat without passing out from a sugar hit." She took off her hat, opened the styrofoam container and began to tuck into the sandwich, a broad smile of appreciation on her face.

"Well, I can see the way to your heart Laura – corned beef!"

"You're in my heart already, Mr Steele," replied Laura with a sweet but slightly ironic grin, flicking her eyebrows up for extra emphasis.

"Now, uhm, I don't mean to come between a ravenous woman and her prey, but have we made any progress on the case? Any breakthroughs at the factory today?"

"Hnghmf…" said Laura, with her mouth full of food, before she swallowed it. "Mildred and I got to the depot this morning, and we mixed with the other drivers at the staff restaurant, listening for gossip. It was easy, as there are a lot of temporary employees that are hired around this time of the year. Everyone has a theory, of course; the most popular one seems to be that Jingle Dingle or Dreyer's have hired somebody to take down the company – a kind of James Bond of industrial espionage."

"Well, you and I have seen that kind of thing before, haven't we? Veckmer? Enterprow?"

A shadow passed over Laura's face at the memory. "Uh-huh. But I'm afraid it was useless really – just talk. None of the ice cream drivers really knew anything." She took another mouthful of her Reuben sandwich. "And the problem is that I've been stuck here for most of the day. Mildred and I haven't been at the factory, so we're not really learning anything useful to help solve the case. I think we need to scratch this undercover idea as a mis-step."

"Where is Mildred?" asked Remington, as he opened one of the vats and had a look inside. "I must say…this gelato looks very enticing."

"Mildred's driving a route somewhere in Palos Verdes," replied Laura, finishing her food. "If you want a gelato, just help yourself."

Steele picked up a cone from a box, then put a large scoop of gelato on it and resumed his position leaning against the freezer: it was a little cramped in the truck for two people and there was nowhere for him to sit down. "Hmm…delicious," he said, exaggerating only a little his delight at the first taste of the ice cream. He held the cone out towards Laura, "Would you like some, Laura? It's chocolate."

Laura had been trying not to stare as Remington had taken his first lick of the ice cream, but now, she looked at him wide eyed. "Cho-choc-chocolate? Er…no thank you," she said, an expression of trepidation mixed with longing on her face. She knew what chocolate could do to her…

Unfortunately, so did Steele. "Are you sure, Laura?" he asked, taking another mouthful of the chocolate gelato, closing his eyes for a second, then smiling devilishly and luxuriating in its taste in an over-the-top way.

"No! No, thank you," Laura exclaimed in a squeaky voice, trying to get herself under control.

Remington could no longer keep a straight face, and began to laugh heartily. Her tension abated, Laura began to laugh too. "You're wicked, you know that?"

"Ah, my dear Laura, I've told you before, your chocolate obsession just makes you human – you don't have to fear it or control it. You can't control everything; some days you eat the bear, and some days the bear eats you."

Laura squinted, ready to fly off the handle at the implication that she was a control freak – but then she stopped herself. She looked at Remington: his face showed only contented joy as he enjoyed the ice cream, and she realized that there had been no intention to provoke behind his remark – he hadn't been making a dig at her. How different from early in their relationship, when they had baited each other frequently. If Laura hadn't thought about it before, she realized now that things between them had changed.

She smiled at Remington, acknowledging his words of advice. "Listen, let's go for a walk, shall we? It's very hot in the back of this truck."

Remington pushed open the rear door and stepped out, followed by Laura. It was another gloriously sunny day, and they walked around the perimeter of the central plaza between the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and Mark Taper Forum. Laura stopped to watch the school children playing in the square, daring each other to run across the fountains for which the Music Center plaza was famous – they were timed, turning on and then off on a twenty-second cycle.

"I remember when I was a little girl, sometimes on a Sunday evening if it was really hot, my father used to bring Frances and me down here to the Music Center so that we could run around the edge of the fountain. He dared us to see if we could circle it during the time the water was off, before the jets came back on."

"It sounds like a nice memory. Did you make it? Er, run around the fountain without getting wet, I mean?"

"Oh, easily – Frances and I were practically teenagers, so we were pretty quick on our feet by then. Of course, sometimes we dallied deliberately just to get wet; I remember, we'd go home half soaked and mother would go crazy!" Laura laughed at the recollection.

Steele remembered a conversation he had had with Abigail about Laura's relationship with her father, and how close they had been; it was a conversation that he had not had a chance to finish. He wanted to ask Laura about her father, but decided that this was not the right time. "I'm sorry to break the mood, Laura, but going back to the case: what are we going to do next?"

Laura came out of her reverie, and was once more her usual, businesslike self. "Well, I'm certainly not going to waste another day working as an ice cream truck driver – I've learned nothing useful. Mildred hasn't picked up anything either. We definitely need to attack the problem from a different angle." They were both lost in their thoughts as they completed their circuit of the square and once more arrived at the ice cream truck, pausing at the rear doors.

Steele began to reply, "If you feel you've wasted your time undercover, then we should …"

Suddenly, he was cut off by the sound of a loud engine that could be heard behind them. Turning towards the noise, Steele saw an ice cream truck with a masked man at the wheel hurtling towards them at breakneck speed – it was only fifteen yards away. "Laura – look out!" he screamed, as he jumped at her and sent the two of them sprawling out of the way of the vehicle as it crashed into the back of Laura's truck, missing them by inches.

"Uh…what happened?" asked Laura, slowly sitting up from where they had landed, just feet away from the pile of broken glass and steaming and twisted metal – it looked like the radiator of the runaway vehicle had broken open and steam was rising up from the engine. The killer truck was half embedded in the back of Laura's Rossi truck, the doors of which had caved in from the impact.

"Somebody tried to kill us, that's what – and we weren't even kissing!" said Remington, rising from the ground and straightening his sunglasses, which were sitting wonkily on his nose.

"Are you okay? Did you see who it was?"

Steele stood up and helped Laura to her feet, brushing himself down. "I'm fine. All I saw was a man at the wheel – and then BANG! – it was demolition derby time."

Now that the danger had passed, a few people in the plaza had begun to approach them, drawn by the wreckage. Laura went to the cab of the runaway truck and looked in through the open driver's door: a metal stick had been jammed on the accelerator pedal, keeping it depressed. "It looks like our guy – whoever he was – jammed the accelerator to the floor and then jumped out of the truck before the impact. There might be fingerprints on the wheel."

"_After Hours_!"

"What?"

"_After Hours_ – Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Warner Brothers, 1985. A man out late at night in New York is almost run down by an unhinged Mister Softee truck operator when he rejects her romantic advances."

Despite the adrenaline in her system and their recent narrow escape, Laura laughed. "You think this attack might have been by one of your ex-girlfriends?" The sound of a police siren could be heard in the distance – no doubt making for the scene.

"Erm, no, no Laura – I was just making the comparison, that's all. I think this attack must've been directed at us by the bad guy – whoever it is behind the attacks on Rossi Gelati."

"Hmm…" said Laura, deep in thought. "If that's correct, then it's not good. We were supposed to be investigating this case discreetly – but now the person responsible would appear to know about our involvement." The siren was louder now – the police car was probably just a minute or two away.

"Ah…oh! That's not good – from the looks of this, we're now a target!"

"True. But listen, Remington – it's still better if you're not around when the police – and maybe the press – arrive. Your face is too well known, so get out of here. I'll handle the police; they'll see my uniform and assume I'm just a regular Rossi driver."

Remington didn't argue – by now, he knew Laura's judgment was second to none. He leaned down and picked up her red Rossi derby: the hat had been crushed when they had dived for safety. He handed it to her. "Let's hope this isn't an omen, eh?" he said, indicating the crushed hat. He squeezed her hand, then trotted off across Hope Street and disappeared towards the next block, just as a police car approached the Music Center plaza from the other direction.

Two policemen climbed out and headed towards Laura, who was still holding the crushed derby in her hands.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

Laura felt, unaccountably, a little bit guilty – it was not in her nature to play hooky from the office. Yet today, she and Remington were taking time off during the working week to go shopping, and even though they were their own bosses and could do as they pleased, it sat rather uneasily with her.

Sure, there had been that period a few months previously when she had been in training for her first triathlon, and had spent very little time at work; but Laura could justify to herself that there had been a valid reason for her curtailed office hours.

Her new husband, of course – much to Laura's frustration – had never had a problem buzzing off during the working week whenever he felt like it, especially if the humdrum responsibilities of running a business became a little tedious for him.

He was though, Laura thought to herself, much more reliable than he had been when he had first stormed into her life. In those early days, Remington had seemed to derive a perverse pleasure from making as much mischief as possible: from ragging Bernice, Murphy and herself; from spending too much of the agency's money on extravagances; and from avoiding any semblance of 'work' – even if it amounted to skipping meetings he was supposed to be attending as the publicity figurehead. Bernice had once compared him to the creature from the movie _Alien_: "You know in that movie, Laura, there was a moment – when the Alien burst out of John Hurt's chest and just stood still for a couple of seconds – when if someone had been quick enough, they could've killed it with just one blow from a stick or a hammer or something, and saved themselves a whole lot of grief later. You had the same chance with our 'Mr Steele' – if you had just chased him away that first day when he spun around in that chair and said he was Remington Steele – well, we'd have a lot less aggravation now!"

Laura had not, of course, chased 'Mr Steele' away in those first few minutes when he had appeared in the office the day after the Hunter Case ended – she had neither been able to deny her attraction to him since she had first set eyes on him, nor to suppress her enormous curiosity to find out more about him and his mysterious past.

And now, almost four years later, Remington was quite a different man – a changed man – mused Laura; changed to the point of being a little closer to domestication. Of course, he would never be conventional, like other men – but these days, he more or less managed to genuinely run a successful business, sustain a relationship with her and stay on the right side of the law most of the time. Of course, there had been that fishing boat wedding business…

Laura's reminiscences ended as she stopped to look in at a display window. She was dressed for the hot weather, in a mustard yellow three-quarter length pinafore dress with buckles on the shoulder straps, a white long sleeved tee shirt underneath, and russet colored women's brogues. She and Remington were hunting for a bureau or bookcase in which to store files and papers, and at the moment they were perusing the boutiques of the Helms Bakery, a former bread factory that had been converted into a designers' mall, located a few minutes from their office.

They had already spent the morning at two big department stores, Bullocks Wilshire and The May Company, in their furniture departments. And despite her misgivings about missing work, it had been very nice for Remington and her to just spend a few hours together doing ordinary things, without the cares of the agency and without people shooting at them. Besides, Laura had justified to herself, they would be back on stakeout tonight in the line of duty.

She looked again through the window of the furniture store; there were one or two pieces, artfully disguised with closing doors so that they looked more like cabinets than shelving units, which might suit her purpose. She called to Remington, who had walked ahead and was looking in the window of another antiques shop.

"Remington – let's go in here, if you don't mind?"

Steele, dressed casually in a pair of olive colored Levis chinos, a white button down shirt and a brown tweed Jaeger sports coat, wandered back towards her. "Good idea, Laura – Barker Brothers are a top notch west coast furniture manufacturer."

"You know about Los Angeles furniture makers? You've only been here a few years."

"Er, I did furnish my apartment Laura – though I admit I did consult an interior designer as well. Antiques and furniture are an interest of mine, you know."

"Of course – but Remington, let me be clear: we are not going to spend thousands of dollars on this bureau, okay? This is not an exercise in buying some exquisite Louis Quinze original cabinet or something, which costs a fortune."

"Fear not, Laura – prudence is my watchword!"

"I think we want something that is high quality, certainly, and fits into the art deco style of your place – but it can be domestically made, and doesn't have to be an ultra expensive piece."

Steele nodded his agreement, as they began to wander around the huge showroom. For the next couple of hours, they perused the best that the various boutiques and shops of the Helms Bakery had to offer. Remington's keen artistic sense – he was very much a visual person whereas Laura's sensibilities tended to the aural and musical – was invaluable as he offered assessments of the design of various pieces of furniture they looked at. Unlike so many men, Steele seemed to enjoy shopping with her and Laura never got the feeling that he was merely along for the ride to keep her company.

Eventually, they settled on a custom-designed, disguised shelving unit which they saw at one of the high end boutiques, and placed an order for a duplicate to be made to the exact dimensions to fit their apartment. Laura was grinning as they came out of the store.

"Shall we grab a coffee, Laura?" asked Steele, looking at his gold Longines watch. "And why do you look like the cat that got the cream, eh?"

"Oh, I'm just happy, that's all. It's been nice today – just spending some time together. And thank you for being so understanding about the wall cabinet." Laura, generally reticent about showing affection in public, turned and kissed Remington briefly on the mouth.

Steele smiled his devilish smile and put his arm around her, as he led her to a table at a nearby café. "Whatever you want for the place, Laura, I think it's fine by me. I realize how much of, uhm, an adjustment the last month must have been for you – moving out of your loft and into a new home. I'll do anything to help that I can."

"Thank you, Remington," replied Laura, squeezing his hand, as a waiter took their order and brought them two coffees. "Now I'll have somewhere to store my files and papers."

"Indeed, indeed. But there's still a lot of your stuff at the loft; what are you going to do about all your other things?"

"I haven't thought that far ahead, to be quite honest with you. Perhaps we need a bigger place altogether, where we'll have room for both your stuff and mine?"

"You mean move somewhere entirely new – out of the Rossmore apartment? Well…we've been through a lot of upheaval already in such a short time, isn't it perhaps too soon to move again, eh?"

"I don't disagree – but it's something to think about for the future," said Laura, sipping her coffee.

"And what about your loft – have you thought anymore about giving up the lease? We could put your belongings in storage, at least, and it would certainly remove an unnecessary financial burden."

"I know, you're right. Let me think about it a little more, though?"

"Of course. Listen, Laura – it's just before five. What say we extend this day of enjoyable leisure by taking in a film, eh?"

"Now? We have to work tonight."

"Well, if we catch an early screening, we'll be finished by eight o'clock – we have plenty of time," Remington said, finishing the last of his coffee.

"True…okay, what were you thinking of? One of your golden oldies, no doubt?"

"Oh, no – just whatever is on release at the moment; I haven't checked the details of any of the repertory picture houses, so I'm not sure whether there are any interesting classics showing. So how about _The Money Pit_ with Tom Hanks – a newly-married couple buys a wreck of a property which sucks up all their savings? It could be, ah, quite appropriate as a warning for the two of us."

Laura pretended to frown at Remington's joke, "I don't think so, Mr Steele!"

"Well, could I suggest _Ferris Bueller's Day Off_? It's had some very good reviews in the newspapers. It'll be divertingly humorous."

"_Ferris Bueller's Day Off_? That's a movie for kids, isn't it?"

"Oh, maybe, Laura – but no doubt very enlightening about teenage rites of passage. The terrors and traumas of the typical American high school student fascinate me! I often try to picture you in high school in some of the same situations, getting up to various high jinks."

Laura nodded in recognition and grinned; she remembered being dragged by him a couple of years earlier to a double bill of _Fast Times at Ridgemont High_ and _Valley Girl_ – he had watched with rapt attention and laughed with enormous gusto during both movies. "I wasn't one of the popular, social kids, I'm afraid – no high jinks for me; I ran with the intellectual girls at school," she said.

"Ah, I see – _Revenge of the Nerds_ in your case, eh Laura?"

"Hah!" Laura playfully smacked Remington on the arm. "Okay, Mr Steele – Ferris Bueller it is. And we'll grab some takeout afterwards before we get back to work," she said with a radiant smile, as she linked her arm through his.

"Dinner and a movie it is then, Mrs Steele!"


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

In the back seat of the Cadillac limousine, a large black 'thing' – perhaps best described as a lump – shifted slightly. If Remington Steele had been asked to describe it, he might have likened it to the eponymous creature from _The Blob_, Paramount's 1958 monster movie classic. If Laura Steele, née Holt, had been asked to describe it, as a television fan she would have said it was a dead ringer for the Horta from _Star Trek_. What it was, in fact, was Remington Steele himself, lying in the back seat of the limo under a heavy black cloth, reading.

Laura and her husband were on a stakeout overnight, as they had been for the previous five nights, in the Los Angeles suburb of Vernon. The agency limo was parked, as discreetly as possible, some way down the street which the Rossi Gelati factory backed onto. The small rear gate of the factory could be seen in shadow, about forty yards away.

Vehicular stakeouts were difficult and boring, and were a particular problem for Remington Steele Investigations. As Steele and Laura had often joked to each other, for a night time stakeout their choices amounted to a white vintage sports car, a white German convertible or a black limousine – none of them very inconspicuous. It was one of those things that Laura had often thought that they should really sort out – either by getting rid of one or more of their cars, or by buying something anonymous – but they had never gotten around to it.

And so now they were in the limousine, which by dint of its black color had been selected for this particular job. Laura, dressed in an all black, one piece jumpsuit and wearing her black English flat cap, was taking a turn in the front seat, keeping watch with night vision goggles on the rear of the factory. Steele – also dressed in his black break-in clothes – was in the back, making his way with a little difficulty through Elizabeth David's _French Country Cooking_ using a mountain climber's flashlight mounted on a headband. The black cloth prevented the light from drawing attention to their car. How he wished that they had had blacked out windows installed in the limo!

This stakeout was tedious, but unfortunately, it was the only option that they had left on this case, which had turned rather sour. Unlike the world of her TV detective idols from childhood – _Mannix_, _Perry Mason_ and the _77 Sunset Strip_ boys – real life was not neat, mused Laura. The cases she and Remington were called in on didn't always smoothly fall into place – one clue following another, one key conversation with a critical witness coming easily on the heels of another. Real life detective work could sometimes be messy. They still had no idea who had tried to kill them with a runaway ice cream truck the previous week. Their only real clue in the case was Remington's hunch about how the saboteur had gained entry to the Rossi factory, through the unmonitored rear gate. Laura had full faith in Remington's intuitions, of course, and didn't doubt that he was right; but by mounting a watch on the gate every night for days, they had surrendered the initiative – they were waiting for something to happen.

It was one of the principles of being a private detective that you always had to try and maintain the initiative in a case. Official police work, Laura knew, almost always depended on waiting for a break in the investigation. Solving big crimes – a series of daring robberies, say, or catching a serial killer – depended on checking and cross-checking vast amounts of information. Ted Bundy, or the Yorkshire Ripper, for example, had eventually been caught when they had made a mistake, or often through sheer good luck – and after the police had interviewed dozens of suspects, run hundreds of license plates, chased down thousands of leads. But for a private investigator, this approach was difficult because clients got antsy, and every PI knew that their clients would start to put the pressure on them as the billable hours on a case mounted up.

The same thing had happened with Warren Rossi; he had been harassing Steele and Laura during the last few days for results, although there had been no new incidents affecting his company since the runaway ice cream truck had nearly killed Laura and Remington. And he had been grouching about the mounting costs of the investigation.

Laura glanced at the little digital clock which she had with her, as her normal gold Omega could not be made out in the dark. The time was just after three in the morning. Laura made a mental note to get herself another watch – something cheap which had a glow-in-the-dark dial. Or maybe, she thought with a smile, she'd tell her husband to buy her one; he still owed her a present from last Christmas, and had been going to buy her a new watch, until their office had been invaded by a group of terrorist Santa Clauses. She grinned a little wider: 'husband' – she liked the sound of that word. She was, she realized with one part of her mind – the objective part – getting used to the idea that she had a husband. Of course, she sometimes felt annoyed that most of the adjustments since they had married seemed to have had to be made by her; she was the one who had had to move out of her home – which she minded a little – and she was the one who had had to change her name – which she didn't mind very much at all. But so far, she liked being married more than she disliked it. And the sex was fantastic!

Suddenly she saw a movement near the factory's rear fence. She ducked down low. "Remington, turn the light off!" she whispered urgently.

Steele clicked off the light, threw back the black cloth and cautiously stuck his head between the front seats. "Is there something there?"

Laura nodded in the dark. "Yes. It's a man," she said, giving a running commentary of what she saw through the night vision goggles. "He's opening the gate. Definitely going inside. He's in – let's go!"

Steele and Laura got out of the limo and ran to the gate; the heavy chain and padlock were hanging loose and open. Steele pulled out the agency revolver and held it in front of him as they pushed through and approached the rear exit door. Everything was in darkness. Laura very briefly shone the heavy flashlight she was carrying around for a look, then turned it off again. The door was propped open with a fire extinguisher, just as Steele had suspected. "Well, Mr Steele, you were right about how the perp got inside," said Laura. "Nice work."

"Thank you, Mrs Steele. After you?"

"Oh no, be my guest!"

Steele went through the door, Laura close behind. They walked down the corridor to another door, which had no lock. Cautiously, Steele pushed it open; it gave onto the main factory floor. Dim night lights mounted high on the walls allowed them to make out the room; the huge, gleaming steel machines were quiet – nothing seemed to be stirring. "Split up," whispered Laura, even as Remington shook his head – but she had already headed off towards one section of the room, so he went in another direction, wishing they had two agency guns.

Laura tiptoed along, heading down one aisle beside huge freezer-churning machines that were twelve feet high. As she rounded a corner, she suddenly saw a man dressed all in black, crouching by some other kind of machine. Laura could just make out the back of his neck and sandy hair poking out from under a black baseball cap. She hefted the flashlight and took a couple of strides as quietly as she could, ready to brain the guy. "Don't move," she said in a normal voice.

As quick as lightening, the man jumped up, turned around and charged Laura. "Argh…" she screamed, taken by surprise by his move and unable to react in time as he barged into her with his full weight, sending her flying to one side, before running off.

"Laura!" shouted Steele, hearing the commotion. He spotted her on the floor, and ran up to her. "Laura, are you hurt?" he asked, somewhat frantic with worry.

"I'm fine. Quick – he's getting away," said Laura, rising up and following as Steele chased after the intruder. "He's not armed, but be careful," she called, her first thought being for Remington's safety.

Steele reached the fire exit, which was wide open, with Laura on his heels. The man was not in sight, and as they barged through the outside door, they could see him making hell for leather towards an anonymous blue sedan parked in an alley a few yards up the street. Steele and Laura turned the other way and ran to the limousine. As they clambered in and Steele started the engine, the blue car came careering out of the alley and accelerated away down the street. Steele gunned the engine and headed after it.

"Oh fantastic," said Remington, "now we get to be in a car chase and I'm driving an oil tanker."

Laura was all business, her nostrils flared, her eyes focused on the blue car some forty yards or more in front of them. "Please don't joke around – you'll lose him."

"Okay, okay, Laura; I've got it under control."

The chase continued. Vernon was an industrial district, composed of large, anonymous factory buildings and warehouses which had no windows; expanses of brick walls or metal siding loomed over the streets, giving them a canyon-like feeling. The area was utterly deserted – there were very few cars parked at that time of night, and the streets were wide but lit only sporadically.

"You know, Laura, maybe we should get a Ferrari, eh? All the best detectives have them – Tom Selleck, that John Donson fellow?"

"Jessica Fletcher rides a bicycle on _Murder She Wrote_, Mr Steele."

"Hmm! She is about eighty years old, though!"

"Will you concentrate? If he gets away, Remington, I'm going to send you to bed without any dinner."

"Ha! I'm not sure how you'd manage that, Laura, given that I do all the cooking!"

The car in front turned this way and that, left and right, trying to shake off its tail. It was a nondescript old sedan which could not make much speed, but it was still gradually pulling away from the Cadillac, despite Remington's expert driving, which kept the blue car just in sight. The car would gain an advantage every time it took a corner, while turning the limo was, indeed, like turning an oil tanker; but Steele managed to make up some ground on the straights.

Slowly the car in front was escaping. It was about eighty yards in front of them when it approached a crossroads, turned right and disappeared from sight. When they reached the same spot, just as Remington made to turn the car, they were launched into a huge skid – the limo careened left rather than right, spun 180 degrees and came to a stop with a jolt and a squeal of brakes. The Cadillac's body vibrated for a couple of seconds on its marshmallow-soft suspension.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

"Damn!" said Laura, scrambling back into a sitting position from the floor, where she had been thrown by the skid. She looked down the street where the sedan they had been chasing had headed – but there was no car in sight, and no tail lights visible for two hundred yards, even though the street was a long one which disappeared into the distance. "What happened?" she asked.

"I don't know," answered Remington. "If he'd stayed on that road, we should be able to see him. He must've turned off to the right or left. Let's just cruise down there and check out any side roads which he might have taken, hmm?"

"Agreed."

Remington set off down the street which the blue car had taken. He drove at a slow pace, as he and Laura scanned the alleys and cross streets, hoping for a sign of their quarry.

"It's no good, we've lost him," said Laura after they had traveled half a mile. Steele pulled to a stop. "I just can't understand what happened to him."

Remington was deep in thought, his fingers tapping on the steering wheel. "Think this through, Laura. He got to that crossroads and turned right; we were at most ten seconds behind him, and when we got there, we skidded – say another four seconds – so his lead on us was a maximum of fourteen seconds. But when we looked down the street where he went, he was not in sight, which he should have been."

"Which means he must've turned off into a side road or alley. We know that."

"I have an idea." Steele swung round and headed back to the crossroads where the chase had come to an end. He pulled over and lowered his window, scanning the road surface. "Bingo!" he said, with a smug grin.

"What?"

"Look there, at the pavement. That's the reason we skidded – there's a large patch of oil on the road surface, just at the corner where we had to make the turn."

"I see."

"Now look at the road surface in the direction our man went in – can you see? His tire tracks. He drove through the oil patch as well – he didn't skid, but it got all over his tires and he left a trail."

Laura grinned at Remington, her dimples on full power, then leaned over and kissed his cheek. "Clever, clever Mr Steele. I think you definitely will get your dinner before you're sent to bed."

"Can I have that Ferrari instead?"

"No! Now, if I understand you correctly, we simply follow his tire marks – the oily ones – and that should lead us to him?"

"Exactly. That oil looks pretty fresh, and there don't seem to be any other cars around – I'm guessing those tracks belong to our friend in the baseball cap."

With that, Remington turned the car around and headed off in the direction their quarry had taken – what must have been a full fifteen minutes earlier. Steele drove slowly, and both he and Laura scanned the road surface. The tracks were clearly visible, although they were beginning to fade the further on they went. After about a hundred yards, the tracks turned right – and led up to the large sliding door of a warehouse that fronted onto the street. Remington didn't slow down but drove past the warehouse, turned right at the next corner and pulled the car to a stop.

"You were right, Remington. The reason we didn't see him is that he did pull off the street – but not into a cross street or alley, but into a warehouse."

"Probably pure coincidence – or the bad luck of the Irish, eh? Our skid gave him just enough time out of our sight to turn into his home base."

"Do you think he's in there now?" Laura asked.

"Probably. We've been cruising around this area for fifteen minutes and, even if he had another getaway car, we haven't seen any other vehicles, or any other people, for that matter."

"I don't think we should go through that door – it's far too exposed. And it is probably locked. We need another approach. Maybe we should call the police? This guy did break into the Rossi factory, so they'd have probable cause to go in."

"I really don't know, Laura. How do you want to play it? I definitely agree with you that undertaking a full frontal assault could be rather, er…sticky."

"Let's do to him what he did to Rossi's. The alley at the back of the warehouse might give us a more discreet access."

They stepped out of the Cadillac and headed into the alley that ran parallel to the street onto which the warehouse faced. The alley was dark – a single street lamp at the far end provided a whisper of ambient light, but otherwise they had a lot of shadows to provide cover. Steele and Laura made their way down it, counting the buildings until they reached the back of their target warehouse. It was a double height structure, and they could see a staircase that went sideways up the back of the building to a single access door set high in the wall, at what was obviously the second story level. There were no other doors or windows.

Shielding it with her hand, Laura shone the flashlight downwards to allow them to see where they were treading as they climbed the stairs. At the top, Steele crouched down and picked the lock, then cautiously opened the door a couple of inches wide and looked inside. The door opened onto a gantry that went around all four sides of the building at this upper, second story level. The place was mostly in darkness; looking down into the warehouse, Steele could see the blue car parked below. The warehouse was empty apart from the car – there were no shelving units, no boxes or anything else except the car, and in the front, right corner, an office that had been created by metal and frosted glass partitioning. A set of stairs led down from the gantry on the front left side.

Motioning to Laura to follow him, Steele stepped inside and crouched down low. Laura came after him; once she was inside, she shoved a piece of paper into the hinge of the door, to stop it closing, in case it locked automatically. One of the things she had learned from Remington in her career of breaking and entering was to always have a way out – a tactical line of retreat, in case something went awry.

Silently, they edged around the gantry and descended the staircase, hoping that if their quarry was in the office, he wouldn't see them through the frosted internal windows. At the bottom of the stairs, they crouched low and made a dash for the cover of the car, hiding behind it, out of sight of the office. Steele snaked an arm up and touched the hood – it was still warm. With the only lights in the warehouse coming from the office's windows, they had plenty of semi-darkness for cover.

Remington put his lips to Laura's ear, "Stay here behind the car. I'm going to approach the office door, and jump our man."

"I'm coming with you," she answered, as quietly as she could.

Steele shook his head. "No Laura. If he's waiting for us, two of us make a bigger target than just one. There's only one way into or out of that office – the door. That's the point of maximum danger – the moment I open it. I've got the gun, and I can't be protecting you as well as watching for what he might be doing."

Remington saw the little crinkle in Laura's brow that she got whenever she was worried, but she finally nodded her head in reluctant agreement. She touched his cheek, then whispered, "For Heaven's sake, please, _please_ be careful! I can't lose you now."

As Laura watched breathlessly, Remington crept up to the office door. With the gun ready and his senses on alert, he put his hand on the handle. He paused to collect himself, then turned the handle and burst in, crouching low to provide as small a target as possible in case his man was waiting for him on the other side with a gun pointing directly at the doorway. No one shot at him, much to his relief.

The office was about ten feet by ten feet, and contained a desk with a blotter, telephone and lamp on it; what looked like a workbench along one wall; and a couple of filing cabinets in one corner. There was a Sports Illustrated calendar on the wall with pictures of girls in swimsuits. Various cardboard cartons were piled on one side of the room. A couple of wall lights shone brightly, illuminating the place. And sitting at the desk facing Steele, still upright, with glazed over eyes, was the man in the black baseball cap. A red circle of blood on his chest showed where he had obviously been shot. There was no one else in the room.

"You can come in, Laura," Remington said in a normal tone of voice.

From the fact that her husband was standing in the doorway apparently unconcerned about concealment, Laura guessed it was all clear. She stood up and joined him inside, seeing the dead man immediately. "Looks like somebody beat us here," she said.

After they had both donned pairs of black leather gloves, they searched the room. The filing cabinets were empty. The desk contained a few papers – a bill for a telephone line that matched the number of the phone on the desk, and a lease agreement from the owner of the warehouse in the name of the tenant, Charles Edevane – this was obviously the dead man. The first couple of cardboard cartons contained large bottles of various ingredients used in making ice cream – liquid sucrose, concentrated fruit flavorings, artificial preservatives. In the final carton, Laura found a gallon bottle of calcium polycarbophil powder – the chemical laxative that had been used to sabotage the chocolate ice cream at the Rossi factory a couple of weeks earlier.

"Well, that nails it, I suppose – he was the saboteur," said Laura, indicating the laxative bottle. "But who the hell was Charles Edevane?"

"It certainly appears open and shut. This must've been his base of operations. The other questions are – who killed him? And when?"

"It must have been just minutes before we got here. Think about it – when we lost his trail, we drove around for, maybe, fifteen minutes before we found this place; that would have been more than enough time for the killer to do the job and get away."

"And since we were in the street out in front, cruising up and down…the killer must have made his or her getaway through the back door and the alley, the way we came in. We must have been just minutes behind whoever it was."

"You know, unfortunately, we touched the handle of that back door on our way in – there might have been prints on it, but they will have been smudged or obliterated by ours now," added Laura ruefully.

Steele searched the dead man's pockets and found a wallet; it contained ID in the same name, Charles Edevane. There were also two bunches of keys. Steele inspected them. "Look at this, Laura – we've got one bunch here with, obviously, his car keys and one…two…three other keys." He left the office and went to the warehouse opening, trying out the keys in the locking mechanism located at the side of the sliding door; one of the keys fit perfectly, unlocking the previously-locked door. Steele came back. "Looks like one of these keys is for the main door of this place. I'd guess another one fits that door upstairs which we came in through, and the third is perhaps for his house or apartment or wherever he lives."

"And the other bunch?"

"Just two keys – I would lay odds that they'll fit the rear gate and the rear exit door at the Rossi factory – hence the ease with which he came and went from there."

"Sounds logical. But that begs the question – how did he get them?"

"Find out who he is, and whom he knows within the company, and we'll have the answer. But at the very least, tonight we've accomplished the main goal Warren Rossi wanted – we've found the 'inside man' and there'll be no more sabotage. And no more attempts on our lives. That's something, wouldn't you say?"

"In one way, Remington. But we've got a dead body now – this case is now a murder hunt. And as this Charles Edevane was working with someone else – maybe, as we speculated, with one of the family or as a hired gun for Jingle Dingle – then the case is still wide open."

Laura had been searching the last of the desk drawers, and suddenly turned to Remington with a piece of paper in her hand. "Look at this," she said. "It's some kind of receipt in the name of Mr Edevane here – what do you make of it?"

Steele looked at the proffered piece of paper. "Oh my! How interesting. A broker's receipt for a put option."

"What's that?" asked Laura.

"This gives our Mr Edevane the right to sell a certain number of shares in Rossi Gelati on or before 30th September this year, at a predetermined price. Options are a tool in the financial markets, Laura, a way of hedging your bets as an investor. Say if you own a particular stock – for example, IBM – and its price is now $10, but you think that the share price might go down to $3; a put option gives you the right to sell to someone else at a guaranteed price – say $9. So you hold your IBM shares, and if the price stays stable, you're fine; but if the price collapses to $3, you exercise your option and sell them at $9 rather than the $3 that prevails in the market."

"I understand…Edevane here has the right to sell his Rossi shares at a relatively high price sometime before 30th September, if the share price collapses. But that still doesn't explain why he'd want to actively drive down the share price – he would've paid good money for his shares – surely he still wants the price to go up? The option is just a form of insurance in case things go wrong – why actively sabotage the company?"

"Ah, well – there's a further twist – Edevane doesn't have to own the shares to take out the option. My guess is that he doesn't own any Rossi shares, he just got the option – the right to sell some shares at a high price. Then he drives down the share price through sabotage. On 30th September, he goes into the market and buys the shares at their regular, post-collapse price, then goes to the person who's given him the option and sells at the guaranteed, high price. Instant profit for Mr Edevane."

"It's straightforward once it's explained, Remington. So that's how these Ivan Boesky types make their money, eh?"

"Unfortunately, I fear you're right, Laura. But what Edevane here is doing is still utterly illegal – industrial sabotage and market manipulation. And as you said, the question now is who was he working with – and therefore who killed him?"

"Come on, let's get out of here. We should take this broker's receipt with us. It definitely needs further looking into."


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

Laura poured some milk into the bowl in front of her, gave it a stir with a spoon, and then, unable to resist the temptation, picked out a few of the marshmallowy bits and put them in her mouth, letting them dissolve on her tongue. The sweet, gooey goodness was perfection – she didn't care how unhealthy it was, she loved Ghostbusters cereal! And it had been a pretty good movie too.

She placed her cereal bowl on the tray next to the pot of coffee she had made, and carried it back to the bedroom, stopping on the way to pick up the weekend edition of the _Los Angeles Times_ which one of the concierges had placed just outside their apartment door. She quietly climbed back under the covers, then looked at Remington, who was still asleep on the left hand side of the bed. It had been another warm night, and he had pushed down the bedclothes; his chest was naked, as he was wearing only the bottom half of a pair of ivory silk pajamas. Laura herself was wearing the matching pajama jacket – she sometimes sneakily borrowed his night clothes, as it gave her a feeling of closeness to him to sleep in something of his.

As she ate her cereal, she stared at him – at the slightly freckled, pale countenance, the features now soft in repose. God, he was handsome – almost supernaturally so. Laura, of course, never told him so to his face – it was hard enough keeping his flights of fancy under control without further flattering his vanity. Sometimes, Laura couldn't believe that the man next to her was her husband; she almost had to remind herself with the realistic, rational part of her mind that they were married, both in fact and in spirit.

Laura often felt that she had been two or three different people during her thirty years. A rather shy creature when she was a girl, she had always been in the shadow of her more gregarious sister, Frances. Laura – quiet, studious and slightly introverted – had never been a social butterfly, particularly as both of them had attended the girls only Marlborough School. Sure, she had had one boyfriend during her school years – Marty Kloppman – although he himself had not been one of the popular boys but a bookworm.

Growing up, Laura had always felt put upon, struggling to stand up under the pressure of her mother's demands. Apparently destined for the life of an upper middle class housewife, Laura had never been a rebel; instead she had been a pleaser, as compliant as she could be towards meeting everyone's expectations and putting her hand up for every dirty job. She had been fortunate in some ways: her academic brilliance had earned her a respite from totally living the life her mother had wanted her to live – something Frances had never been lucky enough to pull off.

But it was when she had left home for Stanford that things had changed. The thought had once struck her that, unlike other kids, she had actually gone through her years of adolescent rebellion only after she had reached the age of majority. Suddenly, the cautious, nice girl gave way to the wild, spontaneous Laura. Breaking out from under the thrall of her mother's household had been liberating. There had been men, of course, for the first time – it was at Stanford that Laura had lost her virginity at the ripe old age of eighteen. While she had never let her academic discipline waver, college had opened up a new world of freedom for Laura, so much so that she had had a few boyfriends and had even had an affair with her calculus professor – something that rather embarrassed her today.

And then she had met Wilson – the older, staid banker who had fallen for the carefree young member of the Havenhurst graduate recruitment program. She and Wilson had been inseparable for over two years and had even lived together, until finally he had left her, unable to handle her impulsive, uninhibited and absurdly passionate behavior.

For so long since, Laura had been closed off; it was almost as if a part of her had shut down – the part dedicated to love and emotion. After she had left Havenhurst and struck out on her own, the most important thing in her life had been her work – her career. Her years of spontaneous rebellion had gone just as they had come, and she had reverted to being the analytical, conservative person that she always fundamentally had been. Her focus had moved to attending that meeting, to solving that case, to writing that report, to making that list of things to do…using work as a wall to guard herself from intimacy, she had become so caught up in the rat race that she had almost forgotten the landscape of the heart – as if she had been a career robot with no inner life.

Until he had appeared…

They were so ill matched, really, and their relationship had been so tortured by neither one wanting to give ground – to make the first move by conceding that they loved the other. Laura had fended off his sexual advances for years, unwilling to give herself to a man who was so slippery, so unwilling to express his authentic feelings. And so they had sparred and bantered and kissed a little, and had had a great time solving cases and helping people and having adventures, but their relationship had not moved forward: it had gone nowhere. All love, thought Laura, required a person to yield; there was a point where you just had to crawl out to the end of that overhanging tree branch and hope it wouldn't snap; there was a time when you had to expose your vulnerabilities to another person – to that special other person – and take a leap of faith that you wouldn't be rejected, and that they loved you in turn. And if you were not willing to take that leap of faith, then love was lost to you.

And so it had been with her and Remington – they had circled around each other, two people who were not conventional, and their courtship had not been conventional either. Laura thought that if Remington had not had problems with the INS, the two of them might never have come together and might have continued their elaborate mating dance indefinitely. Circumstances had forced them together – thank God – and she and Remington had finally made that leap of faith to be with each other.

Laura, being something of a worrier, found herself at certain times – like this, on a quiet Saturday morning – reflecting upon her marriage. She still didn't quite know how it would work out. Was love enough? The terrain that she found herself walking across was so unfamiliar. It was almost as if she could step outside of herself, and look down at the two of them from above, and speculate about what the future held. She was aware that her feelings sometimes swung wildly, but she couldn't help it. Sometimes things felt perfect; they had been shopping for furniture recently, and to just spend time together, in such easy intimacy and companionship, had been so wonderful that Laura had been left almost giddy with happiness. But at other times, she would stop and shake her head, unsure how their shotgun-sort-of-a-wedding and their different personalities could sustain a fulfilling marriage, despite the fact that they loved each other. Laura – so often a grounded and stable person – was a cauldron of mixed feelings these days. She so wanted her marriage to Remington to work, but she was so scared of investing too much in that hope.

Remington shifted and felt a heavy weight against his leg, which stirred him from unconsciousness. He slowly opened his eyes, and looked down to see the newspaper which had been placed on top of the bedclothes and which was resting on top of his right leg. He raised his eyes higher and saw Laura sitting up against the headboard, eating cereal and watching him. "Good morning," he said, with a half-yawn. "What time is it?"

"Good morning, sleepy head. It's a little after ten."

"Uhgh…" Steele groaned. "Aren't you tired? We were at that bloody warehouse until nearly four. Why don't we go back to sleep, Laura, eh? It is Saturday, after all."

"I've had a few hours, so I'm fine. But you can go back to sleep if you like. Really, I don't mind," said Laura, opening the newspaper.

"Ah, that's what I love about you Laura – you're always so perky in the mornings!" Remington sighed. "Anyway, I'm awake now." He stretched, then sat up himself.

"Do you want some coffee?" asked Laura, moving towards the tray on top of the dresser next to the bed. She poured a mug of coffee for Remington, then got back into bed.

"Oh, thanks. This is very civilized – breakfast in bed."

"Hmm…well, don't get used to it! But since I was up and you were still asleep, I brought a morning tray in here for us. Speaking of that warehouse, that reminds me – I must call Mildred."

Laura reached into her nightstand and retrieved the broker's receipt that they had found the previous night, then picked up the telephone. She called Mildred and explained the situation to her, as Steele listened in with half an ear while drinking his coffee. "Good news," Laura said as she hung up the line, "Mildred has a friend in the SEC that she is going to contact about this receipt."

"The Securities and Exchange Commission?"

"They'll have the authority to subpoena records from this brokerage, Gleason, Peretti & Company."

"Ah, I see. Well, now that you've made that call, there's nothing else we can do today, is there?" asked Remington, putting his coffee cup down and edging closer to Laura. He put his arm around her waist and started to nuzzle her left ear.

Laura squealed and burst out laughing, "That tickles. Now, behave yourself, please!"

"Must I? Come on Laura, let's er…neck, as you Americans say, hmm?"

Laura turned her head and kissed Remington, then pushed him away – tempting though his invitation was – and slipped out of bed to head to the bathroom. "Come on," she said over her shoulder. "If you really are awake, you promised to help me pick up some things from the loft today. We can't waste the whole day lying around in bed."

Steele sighed again, "Whatever you say, Mrs Steele – I am yours to command." He clambered out of bed, put on his woolen burgundy robe, and headed to the kitchen to make himself some breakfast.

A little over an hour later, he and Laura headed out and took the Rabbit to her loft downtown on 10th Street. Laura had dressed quite casually in a Vicky Tiel plum-colored, velvet tailored jacket, a simple white tee shirt and black, tight fitting Guess jeans. She had left her hair loose, she wore no make up apart from some blusher, and the only jewelry she had on was her Peppler wedding ring. Remington was dressed in work clothes – a pair of gray, military style LL Bean combat pants, black chukka boots and a very baggy, casual white shirt made by Sero.

It had become a ritual for them, in the two weeks or so that they had been living at Remington's, to head over to Laura's old place to pick up her things as and when she realized she needed them. At first, she had brought over a few clothes, and Remington had cleared one of his many closets for her. After they had returned from honeymoon, and as they settled into 'domestic bliss', Laura had been reminded again how complicated moving in with somebody else could be. She had been through it before, when Wilson had moved into her small two bedroom house in Studio City back in 1979; then, it was Wilson who had had to adjust to a new living space, whereas this time most of the adjusting had fallen onto Laura's shoulders.

As Steele drove along in the bright, June sunshine, he smiled to himself; it was another hot and sunny day in Los Angeles. Sometimes, LA could become too warm for his liking, especially around Christmas, but in general it was a wonderful relief for someone like him, who had spent most of his youth in the gloomier climate of England – at least until he had escaped to the Mediterranean and the playground of the Riviera.

"You know, Laura," said Steele, "it's a lovely day, and we didn't have any other plans, but it's not really very practical to have to keep going over to your old place to collect your things, is it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I've, uhm, mentioned it before…have you thought any more about resolving this situation – putting your belongings into storage and canceling the lease on the loft?"

"Well, of course I have thought about it. It's perfectly logical, really – we've decided to live at your place, and so I should cancel the lease on the loft soon."

"I sense a 'but' coming."

"No 'but'…" said Laura, who then turned her head slightly and looked out of the window. She didn't want to continue the conversation, especially not at that moment, and upset their good mood. How could she explain to Remington that if she gave up her loft, it would make her feel the finality of their marriage, and that that feeling scared her so? They had poured their feelings out to each other in Ireland, and she had said – as had he – that they loved each other and wanted to be together; so would Remington ever understand her reluctance to give up the loft without clearer guarantees about their future together? Laura knew that it was unfair to keep things inside and to not let Remington know what bothered her: that she needed emotional reassurance about the two of them – that she needed to know their plans for the future – before she could feel comfortable with cutting her ties to her former life.

At her old building, Steele unlocked the padlock and slid back the loft door, ushering Laura in ahead of him. She took a sheet of paper out of her purse and handed it to Remington, "I made a list of things for you to do, okay?"

Remington read the piece of paper and the jobs assigned to him:

1. Strip bedclothes off of the bed and place in a laundry bag, then take them to the car and take to laundry later.  
2. Pack my winter coats and scarves into a large carton and seal it with tape – leave it by the door to collect next time.  
3. Collect my light gray fedora, dark gray fedora, light tan fedora and their hat boxes and take them back to Remington's apartment – Warning: be careful and do not crush them!  
4. Throw away any remaining food in the refrigerator and freezer into the trash and then turn off the power.  
5. Carry my wooden trunk of family mementos down to the car and take it back to Remington's place – Note: do not forget the photograph of mom and me which is on the coffee table.

"How very organized you are, with your lists, Laura," he said with a wry smile.

"One of us has to be, Mr Steele!" said Laura with a sweet smile in return.

"And what will you be doing while I'm doing all the heavy lifting, eh?"

"I shall be sorting through my files and books," said Laura, before she headed off towards the corner of the loft that contained her desk and her unusual, antique oak filing cabinet. The cabinet, which was about seven feet tall and contained nearly fifty very shallow, large flat drawers, had originally been part of the fittings of an old fashioned drugstore before being salvaged and recycled.

Steele walked up to the bedroom area of the loft and set to work, taking each of the tasks Laura had assigned to him in order. Occasionally, he would catch a glimpse of Laura at her desk, sifting through some papers; Steele wondered what they were – something as ordinary as her bank statements perhaps, or at the other extreme, letters from an old lover?

He was concentrating on packing Laura's winter coats into a cardboard carton without crushing them irrevocably, when suddenly Laura dropped the book she was holding onto the floor. "I can't do this," she exclaimed, and ran for the door.

Steele looked up at her cry, and saw her leaving. "Laura?" he called after her, moving towards the door as well, but she had already opened it and was heading for the stairs. Steele pursued her, but as he reached the stairwell, he realized that he had left the door to Laura's loft wide open; he hesitated, then turned and went back inside. He sighed, then went into the kitchen and made himself a cup of tea and stood at the counter while he drank it, deep in thought.

He didn't know why she was upset, but he decided he would leave Laura to herself for awhile, even though he wanted to go after her. She was perfectly capable of looking after herself and – knowing her – she would prefer being given some space. Laura hated it if she thought anyone saw her as emotionally vulnerable and she always fought Remington's efforts to protect her in any way. But these days, it was all Steele wanted to do; it was still a strange experience for him to care for someone so deeply and so passionately, yet he had to restrain his instinct to try and protect Laura from the slings and arrows of life.

After fifteen or twenty minutes lost in his own thoughts, Steele locked the loft and headed downstairs. As he stepped out of the building, he saw Laura sitting on the hood of the Rabbit, with her feet on the fender. He went and leaned on the hood of the car, next to her. "Hello there," he said gently.

Laura looked at him, her face creased with worry, then she looked down, unable to maintain eye contact. "Hi," she replied.

"What's wrong, Laura? You ran out of the place pretty fast – I was worried about you."

"It's nothing…nothing to do with you…nothing you can help with."

"To take a leaf out of your book – perhaps it would help to talk about it, eh?"

Laura looked at him again. Her fierce independence meant she had often resisted talking about her worries and fears, especially to him; it was particularly ironic today since he was, from one perspective, the problem. But she also saw in Remington's face concern for her. "It just suddenly hit me – the irreversibility of what we're doing. When I lost my house, this place…" Laura waved a hand at the building, indicating her loft, "was a sanctuary for me – a new start. I worked so hard to make it a home, and now…"

"And now, you think I'm dragging you away from it?"

"I know you aren't really. It's just how I feel; I know it makes no sense. I've only lived here for three years, and it's a rental, and I'm going to be where I should be – where I want to be – with you."

Remington looked at her hard, a slight frown on his face. "Is that what you really want, Laura?"

"Of course!"

"So you say! Yet here you are expressing doubts, worrying about the fact that our marriage is irreversible – but it should be irreversible, shouldn't it? I might not be an expert, but two people in love are supposed to hope that their marriage will be forever – not fear that prospect."

"It's…it's not like that. I want our marriage to work – I'm just uncertain, that's all."

"Or maybe you're just testing me, hmm? 'I don't know,' you think to yourself. 'Can I trust Steele? Old, unreliable, Steele? Maybe – but maybe I'll pull away from him and see how he reacts, eh?' Is that how it is, Laura? You think that by pushing me away, you can test whether I really love you by how long I stick things out?"

"No! Please don't say things like that – I don't want us to fight."

Steele answered in a tense voice, "Who's fighting, Laura? All I'm saying is that it feels like you don't know if you really want to commit to us being together. Is this really only about giving up your loft? Because, if it is, I have a proposition for you – why don't we live here? I'll move in with you."

Laura looked at him, startled; Steele thought again how much like a young girl she appeared when her eyes widened in surprise that way. "You would move in here? To the loft? You always hated this neighborhood!"

"I've always moved around, you know. My apartment on Rossmore – though it's your place, or the agency's, really – is the first place I suppose I would call home that I have had since I was a boy. And it's certainly the longest that I've ever lived anywhere. It's nice, and I like living there, but I don't have any deep emotional attachment to it – not really. I would gladly live here, in your loft, if it would make things easier for you…If this is all just about giving up your loft and not something deeper."

Laura stared at him, unsure of what to say.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

"…That would be a key concern to us, Mrs Steele, as I am sure you can appreciate," said the disembodied voice coming through the speakerphone on Remington's desk. Laura frowned in concentration as she listened.

"Look, Mrs Arrodene, I fully appreciate what you are saying, and I agree with you," Laura replied to the speakerphone. "I understand the SEC's first responsibility is to maintain the integrity of the financial markets. The very reason we came to you is precisely because we suspected a party or parties connected with the company might be planning to manipulate the stock price of Rossi Gelati Incorporated. I am very grateful for your cooperation and the information you've given us, and we intend to reciprocate by giving the SEC all the information we have – when we have it."

"That's a reasonable sounding promise, Mrs Steele – but in the financial markets, timing is everything. Providing us with a neat package of evidence after the fact really isn't that helpful to us – we would much rather have forewarning of any suspicious change in the price, so that we can suspend trading in the stock if need be."

Laura looked at Mildred, sitting next to her at the desk – she was silently mouthing the words 'be nice' to Laura, who looked a little irritated. Laura nodded acknowledgement to Mildred, then addressed the speakerphone again, "I understand that, Mrs Arrodene. I've been completely forthright with you: as soon as our agency found out about Charles Edevane – that he was the former production manager at the Rossi factory – and suspected him of industrial sabotage, we let you know. Thanks to you, we now know who was standing behind Charles Edevane. As soon as we can prove the links between the two parties, we'll let you know – without any delay. You have the word of the Remington Steele Agency on that."

"Okay, Mrs Steele, that's acceptable to the SEC; I'll wait to hear on you…Mildred – it's always great to talk to you, I'll keep in touch. 'Bye."

"Goodbye, Janice – it was great to touch base. And thanks for your help," said Mildred to her friend on the other end of the line.

"Thank you, Mrs Arrodene," added Laura, then cut off the line.

"Whoo-ee!" exclaimed Mildred, "that was a little tense, huh?"

"It could've been better, Mildred. I hope it won't cause you any problems with your friend."

"Janice? Oh, don't worry about that – she and I go back a long way. I'm sure she didn't mean to come across as difficult – she was just defending her agency's interests, that's all."

"I know, Mildred. I agree with her – the last thing that our client needs is for the stock price of his company to collapse. We just couldn't go shouting about what we know from the rooftops until we had a solid suspect for the sabotage."

"Well, we got a name now. What's the next step, Mrs Steele?"

"I'm not sure, Mildred; that's what I would want to talk to Mr Steele about, if he were here," Laura said with a flash of irritation. "Where is that partner of mine, anyway? He left well over two hours ago."

"Beats me, Mrs S.," answered the older woman. "But if I had to guess, I'd say the boss has gone off to lunch."

Laura looked at her watch. "It's two-twenty – a long way past lunchtime. He never said anything to me about going to eat after he finished at the coroner's office."

"Well, you know what he's like, Mrs Steele."

"Oh, I do Mildred, I do," Laura said with a sardonic grin. "There isn't much that can come between Mr Steele and one of his favorite restaurants."

"The boss sure likes his fancy food, Mrs S. I think half the Los Angeles economy would collapse if he stopped eating out."

Laura laughed. "How right you are, Mildred. Mr Steele is quite the gourmet: more than that, even. I sometimes worry, though, that with his diet, his cholesterol level must be through the roof."

"He eats a rich diet from what I've seen, for sure. What's he like at home – you know, since you both got married?"

Laura grinned even wider, looking conspiratorial. "Don't you dare tell him I said this, Mildred – but it's been fantastic! Do you know, Remington has cooked every day since we got back from Dublin; I literally mean – every day. He's just so considerate, Mildred: we get home from work and he goes off to the kitchen and, voilà – an hour later there's some amazing creation laid out on the dining table. I've never eaten so well; my only problem is that I think I'll end up piling on the pounds if this goes on!"

Mildred laughed, "Oh honey – enjoy it while you can. If Mr Steele is like most men, three months from now, he'll be sitting in a laz-y-boy and expecting you to do all the housework."

"That, er, sounds like my parents when I was growing up; I came from a very traditional household. But I think you've misjudged Mr Steele, really. If anything, the opposite is true – he's been alone for so long, I actually wonder if he needs anybody."

"Oh, Mrs S. – the boss loves you! I'm sure he needs you."

"No, no Mildred, I don't mean that; I really meant just around the home, you know? The kitchen is his domain already; for other chores – well, he's always had a cleaner who comes in. But his clothes, for example – he brushes them and arranges them and puts them out himself. So far, he has bought nearly all the groceries on the only occasion we've been shopping together. It's all so different from the previous generation of men – my mother actually used to buy my father's clothes when they were married The complete opposite of how organized Remington is."

"But I didn't think you were interested in some old fashioned kind of a guy, who was completely hopeless around the house?"

"No, you're right Mildred. I never wanted to be a housewife, that's for certain. I guess I'm not making much sense; but I just wish Remington was a little less self-sufficient, you know? It would be nice to be consulted on things around the place – just a little bit."

"Don't worry, there's no doubt in my mind that he needs you, Miss Holt – sorry, Mrs Steele."

Laura smiled, "It's okay, Mildred, we're all getting used to the change. Look, do me a favor, will you? Phone some of Mr Steele's favorite restaurants and see if you can find him – if you do, tell him to come back to the office."

Just as Laura uttered the words, the main door could be heard opening and footsteps sounded in the outer office, before Remington Steele appeared in the open doorway. Steele was wearing a dark blue, wool three-piece suit, a white shirt with collar bar, a lighter blue Hermès silk tie and a silk pocket square in another shade of blue. All in all, he looked a symphony in blue. He was chewing on a toothpick, as was sometimes a habit of his. "Good afternoon, ladies," he said effusively.

"Mr Steele, how nice of you to show up! We were about to send out a search party," said Laura, exaggerating the look of annoyance on her face.

"Ah, dear Laura – I took a detour for the necessary imperative of ingesting a repast. Surely you can sympathize?"

Mildred looked baffled as Laura said through pursed lips, "In other words – you went to lunch? What did I tell you, Mildred?"

"A man has to eat, Laura, hasn't he? This is tough, grueling work we do – have to replenish the batteries at some point in the long day," said Remington with a benevolent smile. "But I do come bearing gifts!" he added, his finger pointing to the ceiling as he spoke to them. He opened a box that he had been carrying and placed it in front of them on the desk: it contained a selection of pastries and sweet things.

"Oh, Chief – what have you got us?"

"For my two favorite ladies – cannoli," announced Steele, his smile of self-satisfaction even wider. "And a few pignolati."

Laura and Mildred stared at the assortment of pastries – sprinkled with confectioner's sugar and almost tempting the two of them to reach out and grab one. Mildred didn't resist the temptation, and Laura quickly followed. Remington grinned with satisfaction, his ploy – if that is what it had been – having worked. He also dove in for a pastry.

"Where are these from, Chief?" asked Mildred, her mouth half full of cannolo.

"Well, since I was downtown, and Rex Il Ristorante was so close – I felt I had to pop in."

"Just couldn't resist, eh? And on agency time! Mr Steele, I'm disappointed," said Laura, mentally counting the number of pastries in the box.

"Rex's is one of the best Italian restaurants in the city, Laura! I was sure there was nothing so urgent going on here that couldn't wait an hour or so. And Mauro sends you his felicitations upon our marriage, and says he hopes to see you there soon."

"Hmm…well, if he keeps feeding me cannoli this good, tell him I'll be there like a shot," she replied, her good humor having returned. "Now, if I could interrupt you while you stuff yourself – would you mind telling us what you learned at the morgue?"

Steele, seeing Laura and Mildred sitting at two chairs behind his enormous desk, perched himself on the edge of it, in a position subconsciously echoing the one Laura more usually took up. "Ah, yes – the coroner's office. You know, Laura, I had a strange sense of _déjà vu_ when I was there – I think I must have been channeling Murphy Michaels." Laura grinned, as he began reading from his small notebook, "The body of Charles Edevane, discovered in a warehouse just before dawn three days ago, following an anonymous tip off." Steele paused to look meaningfully at Laura for a second. "He'd been shot with a twenty-two caliber bullet, right through the heart, at close range – there were some residual powder burns near the wound. The implication, of course, is that the killer was known to him and was able to get up close and personal."

"Anything else?" asked Laura, just before she bit into her third cannolo. "Hmm, these are gorgeous, by the way!"

"Ah, yes – according to ballistics analysis of the bullet, the gun used had a 90 per cent probability of having had a silencer attached. No ballistics match to the bullet however – the gun remains unknown to the police."

"The silencer theory fits – we were in the immediate vicinity and did not hear a shot, so the killer must have used a silenced gun."

"So, what's been going on here in my absence – and why are you and Mildred at my desk?" Steele asked, taking another pastry from the box.

"Well, we had a follow-up conference call with the Los Angeles regional office of the SEC, with Mildred's contact, Mrs Arrodene. The SEC was able to trace that receipt we found in the warehouse from Gleason, Peretti & Company brokers."

"And?"

"Get this – Charles Edevane had an account opened very recently with the brokers, and did indeed purchase a put option on Rossi stock. Now, Gleason, Peretti & Company are a very upscale, boutique brokerage, and they require evidence of significant net worth before they will take on a client. Edevane was an out-of-work manufacturing production manager – a responsible position but not the route to millionaire status. But the SEC found out that his account was financially guaranteed by a Mr and Mrs Harold Shand, in the eventuality that it incurred any losses."

"Hmm…now I can tell, Laura, that you've got an ace up your sleeve – you've got that slightly self-satisfied look on your face. So – who are Mr and Mrs Harold Shand?"

"Well, Mrs Shand was born Victoria Rossi – she is Warren Rossi's cousin, and a shareholder in the company!"

"Holy Pete!" said Steele, immediately seeing the implications. "So – we have a primary suspect for the mastermind behind the sabotage – and for the killing of Charles Edevane."

"Not just that – the SEC also ascertained that Mr and Mrs Shand had purchased a similar put option for the shares on their own account – they have been clients of Gleason, Peretti & Company for years."

"Well, well, well…Good work, Mrs Steele."

"Thank you, kind sir."

"So, what's the next step?" asked Mildred.

"Well," replied Laura, "I think you, Mildred, should start a work up on Mr and Mrs Shand – background, financial analysis, everything."

"While you and I, Laura, should see if we can find out what Mr and Mrs Shand's alibi is for the night Charles Edevane was killed – agreed?"

"Agreed, Mr Steele. Now – pass me another one of those pignolati, will you?"


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

Remington Steele, having taken off the jacket of his light gray, custom made suit and his plain gray tie, entered his kitchen in the remnants of his business attire – the suit pants and a blue, poplin shirt from Hilditch & Key of Jermyn Street in London. He had a slight smile on his face – a smile of quiet nostalgia. Sometimes when he and Laura got home from work and he headed off to the kitchen, he had no idea what he would actually prepare for dinner, and he would 'wing it'. Tonight however, after pondering the question in the limousine as Fred had driven them home, he had it planned out: he would make one of the first dishes that he had ever learned to cook.

Although he would never admit it to Laura, since they had gotten married, Steele had been cooking more often and more creatively than he had used to do when he lived alone. He had never been reluctant to make himself a simple green salad or to order takeout when he had been a bachelor, especially after a long day at the office, or after a day when some joker had felt entitled to bash him over the head or kick him in the ribs. But since Laura had moved in, not only had he volunteered to cook almost all of their meals, he had been stretching his considerable repertoire close to its limits. Steele didn't think too hard about whether this had been to please his new wife, to create a sense of mystique at his own inestimable talents or simply as a form of boasting. But he had certainly created a kind of pressure on himself. But tonight, that pressure wouldn't be a problem.

Steele poured a large slug of olive oil into his Le Creuset ceramic casserole, threw in a few roughly sliced scallions and one sliced regular onion, and let them soften. After a while he added some thick, farm-reared lamb steaks with the bone still-in, to let them sauté. While the meat sealed itself, he chopped a large amount of dill weed and cut two romaine lettuces into chunks, before adding these to the casserole as well. After seasoning with some salt and pepper, he covered the entire contents of the dish with water, placed the top on it tightly, and left it on the lowest stove setting to cook very slowly. He then strode out of the kitchen in search of Laura.

Steele was surprised to see her sitting at the dining room table. She had apparently already finished her shower, and had changed into a pair of white, semi formal pants and a Ralph Lauren white, cable knit women's 'cricket' sweater which had a colored stripe all around its V-neck opening. Laura hadn't removed her makeup, and Steele gave a double take at the sight of her – she looked unbelievably alluring to him, with a sprinkling of freckles on her chest visible where the V-neck opening plunged down and hinted at hidden secrets. "Hello," he said with a smile, sitting down opposite to her. "I guess you finished your shower? You look very fetching!"

"Thank you," Laura smiled at his compliment, pleased that she still had 'it'. "And where were you?" she asked, as she shuffled some papers which she had spread out over a large part of the glass dining table.

"Oh, I was making us something to eat – it should be ready in an hour or so, if you don't mind waiting? What are you up to?"

"Well there's nowhere to work in the apartment, is there? I can't believe you have never had a desk, Remington! I mean – okay, you might not have needed a home office, but at least a little desk in a corner somewhere?"

"Ah, well you see, my dear Laura – I made it a golden rule to do no work here if at all possible!" he exclaimed with a smirk. Steele looked at some of the papers that Laura had scattered around, and which she was now sorting through. "Er…what exactly are you doing, Laura?"

Laura sighed. "I am sorting out and collecting all the instruction booklets in the apartment into a single file. There will be somewhere to store them now, since we bought the new bureau for our papers."

Steele stared at her wide eyed. "You're what?"

"Look…see this? – the instructions to your stereo system. And this? – the instructions to your very expensive food processor. And we've also got…the control manual for the air conditioning; the manual for the refrigerator; instructions for the bedside alarm clock-radio; the manual for your VCR; etc. etc. You see – I'm putting them all together in one place, so that we know where they are if we ever need to consult them."

"Erm…you don't think that's a little, how can I put this – neurotic? I know you like to make lists, Laura, but that is verging on the obsessive-compulsive, maybe?"

"Huh! Come on!" said Laura, her eyes flashing angrily. "Isn't it better to be organized about these things? Suppose you need to know how to check your refrigerator's humidity level – you can look it up here in the manual. And I remember the hoops you had to go through to get your VCR to work when you first bought it – you remember how much time Lester Shane spent on it? So it is highly likely that you will have to look at the instruction booklet one day, and when you do, you'll know exactly where to find it."

"Well, I must say Laura…you make a certain kind of odd sense."

"Of course I do! If you hadn't been so ready to laugh at me, and had listened to my reasoning, you would have realized that a lot sooner," she replied angrily.

Remington held his hands up in a gesture of placation. "I concede, Mrs Steele, I concede! But now – what say you finish that and we actually do some real work, eh?"

Laura nodded, and sorted the last of the booklets and manuals into the box file, then put it aside. Remington meanwhile had brought over some files from Laura's briefcase. He sorted them into two piles, one of which he pushed towards her. "So…everything Mildred could dig up on Mrs Victoria Shand, _née_ Rossi, and her husband Mr Harold Shand."

Laura looked at the checklist that Mildred had included with the files and papers, and read it off: "Basic biographical material; the official register of shareholders in Rossi Gelati from the Pacific Stock Exchange; financials on Mr and Mrs Shand; property ownership records for said Mr and Mrs Shand; brokerage records for the trading account of Mr and Mrs Shand with Gleason, Peretti & Company brokers; a copy of the company articles and constitution of Rossi Gelati; existing court records, injunctions and judgments involving Mr and Mrs Shand."

"Ah, legwork – don't you just love this job sometimes, eh?"

"Tsk, don't be like that Remington – it's part of the job! Anyway, we are so close to cracking this case, I can sense it. We just need to compile irrefutable evidence against Mrs Shand."

"You're right, you're right. Something in all this information might provide a clue. But there is still a problem, which is that we're a little hazy on what her motive might be."

Laura had already opened the first of the manila folders on her pile. "Well, according to this, Mrs Shand inherited five per cent of the shares in the company from her father. As of yesterday's closing share price, that values her holding at…just under a million dollars."

Remington whistled. "That would put the value of the whole company at roughly $20 million; quite a pretty penny, eh? But as a shareholder, Mrs Shand stands to lose if the stock price crashes – unlike Charles Edevane, who would have undoubtedly benefited from 'shorting' the stock, it would cost her quite a bit."

"Explain that? Why wouldn't it be the same as for Charles Edevane? She would simply have an option to sell the stock at the current, high price after her sabotage had caused the stock price to collapse."

"The numbers don't work. Today her stock is worth a million dollars. Even if she sold it at the same price using an option, when the actual price had collapsed by ninety per cent after the sabotage, her 'profit' would be only $900,000. So why bother? If she had just done nothing, no sabotage at all, her shares would be worth a million – much more than $900,000."

"Uh-huh, I see. Maybe there's something in these files."

Laura began to peruse the next file on her side of the dining table, just as Steele did on his. Husband and wife provided quite a contrast as they sat opposite each other. Laura carefully read one file at a time, moving each one from the unread pile to the completed pile. She took notes as she worked on a yellow legal pad. Steele, conversely, read his papers in a seemingly random order, jumping from one manila folder to another as something lodged in his brain – searching out connections between different pieces of information. Sometimes he would scatter the papers from a file all over his side of the dining table, moving his lips as he talked through ideas to himself, occasionally throwing files that he had finished with onto a new pile he was making on the floor by his chair.

After some time, Laura suddenly spoke up excitedly, "Listen to this. According to the brokerage information, Mrs Shand doesn't own her stock any more! She sold it in a private, off-market transaction about two months ago. The deal has not been registered officially with the Pacific Stock Exchange yet, but will be at the beginning of next month."

"Well done, Laura. That means she does not own any stock. She therefore unequivocally has a motive – she would benefit from shorting the stock price and conspiring with Charles Edevane to sabotage the company."

"It seems hard to believe, though. I mean, it's her family company. He father was one of the brothers who started the thing."

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men – or women, Laura?"

"Hmm. Well, I think we've got a lock on her motive now. According to these state property transaction records, Mrs Shand and her husband invested in some real estate near Oakland in 1981; they sold the properties three months ago, for a loss of just under one-and-a-half million dollars. Contaminated land, apparently."

"Three months ago – just before she secretly sold her shares in Rossi Gelati. It's all becoming rather clear, now, eh?"

Laura and Steele continued to plow through the information. About fifteen minutes later, Steele let out a low whistle and said, "Hello – that's interesting."

"What?"

"According to the company constitution, if it is closed down or goes bankrupt, the lease on the factory and land reverts to its ultimate owner of title. It doesn't say who it is, but I assume that it is the family – so Mrs Shand would get a pretty penny extra from selling her share of that land as well."

"Interesting. I'll make a note for Mildred to dig further into the title records of the land the factory is built on."

Steele glanced at his watch, and shifted in his chair. "I think dinner is pretty much ready, Laura. What say we eat and continue this conversation afterwards, hmm?"

"Oh, yes; I am hungry. What did you make?"

"Uhm – something Greek, actually," Remington said, as he went to the other end of the dining table from where they had been working, and laid two place settings. As he headed into the kitchen, Laura rose to follow him. "It's alright Laura, stay there – it'll be ready in ten minutes at the most."

"No, I'll come in. Maybe I can help?"

Remington, feeling he still had bridges to build after their earlier spat, smiled at her encouragingly and gave her a quick kiss on the lips. In the kitchen, he placed a large pot of boiling water on a burner and tipped what looked like pasta into it. He then pulled out a bottle of white wine from the refrigerator and handed it to Laura, remarking, "Why don't you open this, hmm?"

Laura looked at the bottle. "Kourtaki…" she read. "Oh, I've drunk Retsina before – it's a very distinctive taste."

"Amazing stuff. I acquired a taste for it on my travels around the Peloponnese years ago."

"Ah-ha! Was this when you were smuggling in the Greek islands, Mr Steele? In your mis-spent youth?" Laura asked with a wicked grin, while she opened the bottle of wine.

"Oh, it might have been, Mrs Steele," Remington said with an enigmatic smile. He went to the stove and removed the top of the casserole dish, which had been very slowly bubbling away for the last hour and more.

"What is it?" asked Laura, staring at the pale yellow contents of the Le Creuset.

"Arni frikassee – the Greek version of a fricassée. More a sort of a stew, actually. And we'll be having it with hilopites – Greek pasta."

Steele grabbed a bowl, broke three eggs into it and started to beat them with a fork, slowly adding the juice of two whole lemons which he had squeezed out earlier. He then added a ladle of the liquid from the casserole pot into the eggs, still beating them to prevent them curdling.

"What are you doing?" asked Laura.

"Thickening it, basically. In most cuisines you add some kind of starch – potato starch or a flour-and-milk roux, say – to a stew, a daube, a spezzatino or a guisado. The Greeks add what they call avgolemono – a mixture of beaten eggs and lemon." Steele tipped the egg-lemon mixture back into the casserole dish and mixed it around one more time. He quickly chopped a large handful of fresh parsley and threw this carelessly into the pot as well. "There – it's ready. Shall we eat?"

Laura picked up the casserole dish and took it out to the dining room. Remington, having drained the pot of boiling water through a strainer and put the contents into a large bowl, followed after her. He placed some of the hilopites on their plates, while Laura served out the arni frikassee.

"Hmm…Delicious," said Laura, taking a first mouthful. "Another amazing creation, Mr Steele."

"Uhm, thank you for the compliment, Laura. But I can't take credit for creating it – it's very much a traditional Greek dish."

"So, where did you pick it up? Will you tell me about it?" Laura asked in a straightforward tone of voice.

Steele stared at her for a long second: her face was expectant. He knew instinctively that he had to tell her the truth. After what they had talked about in Ireland – about the need for them to be genuine and open with each other if their marriage was to work – he knew he had no other choice. At one time – when they had first met – dodging Laura's questions about his past had been fun, part of the game the two of them played. But now – today – they were so close, his need to dissemble about his mysterious past no longer really existed. Laura knew so much anyway, and when she asked so simply, with the expectation that he would answer honestly, Steele knew he did not want to do anything other than tell her the story.

"Well, let's see…I told you I once spent some time working on the boat of a Greek smuggler called Markos Androkos. I ended up doing galley duties a lot. It was pretty tough work – producing three meals a day for the crew – mostly sea food, since we were traversing the waters of the Mediterranean. But arni frikassee was one of the crew's favorites, if we could get hold of fresh lamb whenever we were in port. So…I was taught to make it by the rather wizened old ship's cook – a little Greek fellow, who was about seventy, I should guess."

"How did you end up there anyway – you know, smuggling in Greece?"

"Err…where to start?" he answered, with a faraway look. "I'd kicked off out of England and had been bumming around the continent, when I ended up in Greece."

"When was this?"

"Oh…1970, I think. Yes – it was in '70."

"You were still a boy," Laura said, taking hold of one of his hands, an odd look in her eye as she tried to imagine Remington's appearance all those years earlier.

"Ha! I don't think I was ever a boy, Laura – I had to grow up pretty bloody quickly on the streets." Laura nodded sympathetically, and indicated with a look that he should go on. "Anyway, there I was in a poker game in Athens, and to cut a long story short, I lost. Markos ended up with my marker and said I'd have to work it off on his boat. And thus began my not-very-glorious career as a smuggler."

"What did you smuggle? It wasn't anything…really bad, was it? Not drugs?"

"No, no – absolutely not, Laura. I'm not sure how much you know about Greek history, but back in 1970 the country was under a military dictatorship – the 'Regime of the Colonels' they called it. Anyway, the economy was really in, uhm, bad straits then: foreign investors had pulled their money out and it was almost impossible to afford anything you needed because of the rampant inflation. They were just the right circumstances for a smuggler like Markos Androkos; he supplied people with pretty much anything they wanted.

"We had a regular sort of triangular route, you see – a bit like the three-way Atlantic slave trade. We went from Piraeus to Izmir in Turkey, where we took on cheap local cigarettes, and gold. There is a lot of gold in Arabia and India – people from the Middle East and Asia are very fond of jewelry – which was bought up cheaply and melted down by underworld gangs. We then took the cigarettes and the gold to Palermo in Sicily, where we traded them with the Mafia for the kind of things people back home – in Greece – were after; you know, electrical items, blue jeans, other consumer goods. Of course, all that stuff was knocked off – I mean, stolen – from all over mainland Europe by the Mafia's enormous organization. The prices of gold and cigarettes were much higher in mainland Europe, so the Mafia made a lot of money. And then we sailed home, weaving in and out of the Greek islands, avoiding the coastal patrols, and stopping at every little harbor and fishing port where people might have placed an order for some 'duty free' goods. Good Lord – I even remember on one occasion, we smuggled a Volkswagen Beetle from Sicily back to Piraeus!"

"It sounds like an amazing adventure."

"Oh, er, it was exciting at the time – and dangerous. If we'd been caught, we would have spent quite some time in the slammer, I can tell you. But, whatever else, I did take away one thing from that experience – a recipe for traditional Greek frikassee."


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

This would be so much easier, mused Laura, if she were a cop. She was seated at the dining room table in their apartment, working through some reports which Mildred had put together, occasionally taking notes on a yellow legal pad. For the last two days, she and Remington had been trying to trace the movements of Mr and Mrs Harold Shand on the night that Charles Edevane had been killed. Unfortunately, unlike the police, they couldn't simply go to Mrs Shand and ask her about her whereabouts at the time of the murder; and so, other approaches were called for.

After coming home from work, Laura had put away her work clothes, then had bathed, shaved her legs and under her arms, and had changed into a simple white shirt, a pair of close fitting, gray Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and a pair of tan cowboy boots which she rarely wore, but had acquired when she and Remington had chased after a cache of gold doubloons in the San Jacinto Mountains. She had left her makeup on, and her hair was as she had worn it at work – hanging loose around her shoulders, blow dried straight back from her face. Laura almost always blow dried her hair back these days, to hide the evidence of the rather regrettable experiment with bangs she had undertaken on her honeymoon – she could only explain it as being the result of some sublimated anger at Remington over the wedding on the tuna boat.

Laura took a sip from the cup of tea by her side, and looked again at the pile of paperwork before her. Their idea was to use what information they could get about Mr and Mrs Shand to pin down their whereabouts, through a process of reverse elimination.

Mr and Mrs Shand's phone records had shown no phone calls in the early hours of 20th June, when the murder had occurred; this was not surprising, since most normal people would be asleep at such a time. The log from the private security company that patrolled the gated community in Malibu where the Shands lived had reported no cars coming or going from the Shand residence that night. This was not necessarily an alibi, as the Shands may have left their home hours prior to the murder and lain low somewhere. Laura picked up the credit card report and began to read it; something caught her eye – a charge apparently made by one of the Shands in San Francisco at around 2.00 a.m. on the night of the murder, which took place in Los Angeles…

Steele stepped out of the shower and put on one of his bathrobes. He felt refreshed after another day of high crime and low life at the agency – if only it had been so! Instead, today had been one of those slightly tedious days full of legwork! They were trying to either establish or break the alibi of the Shands as the guiding lights behind the Rossi company's sabotage, and Laura had sent him to speak to the private security company of the gated community where the Shands lived. The information was not privileged, but most security companies were very circumspect about releasing information about their clients – it had taken all of 'the' Remington Steele's persuasiveness to get the chief executive of the company to release the patrol logs for that night. Laura was inspecting the logs at this very moment, he knew.

After dinner, Steele had left her to do her paperwork while he went to have a shower. It was one of the emerging patterns of their relationship, now that they were living together, that Laura usually couldn't wait to wash away the grime of the working day when she got home, whereas Steele normally didn't bother to change out of his business clothes until much later in the evening.

He looked at himself in the large bathroom mirror as he plugged in his hairdryer and ran a brush through his hair. He looked at the brush – there were a couple of hairs in the bristles, nothing too serious. Of course, for men, losing a few hairs was an inevitable part of the human condition as you got older. Remington looked at his hair in the mirror – it was thick and lustrous, especially now that it was wet; he might lose one or two hairs, but he didn't think he was in danger of going bald. He was thankful for his good head of hair; no doubt it was genetic. If Remington was lucky, there was no baldness gene in his family line; Daniel Chalmers had had a full head of hair even well into his sixties – and Remington hoped he had inherited that trait from his father.

His father…Steele hadn't thought of Daniel as his father since he had learned the truth in Ireland. Suddenly, inexplicably, Steele dropped the brush he was holding. His vision blurred – he wondered if he was fainting. But no – rather, he couldn't see much because his eyes were filled with tears: tears he hadn't shed before now.

Daniel! That mentor, that friend, that teacher, that father figure, that…father. Steele cried now, unable to hold back the tears as his grief gripped him. Daniel! That liar, that conniver – who had hidden the truth about their relationship for twenty years from Remington. What a bastard! Some father figure he had been!

Steele gripped the edge of the bathroom counter hard, to prevent himself from falling to the floor. He bowed his head down and wept, all thoughts of where he was or what he had been doing driven from his mind. The truth was that he had no coherent thoughts at all – just an inchoate grief, not even anything as specific as a mental image of Daniel – merely the vague remembrance of him.

Laura wandered into their bedroom, reading the credit card report which she had plucked out of the file. She wanted to show it to Remington, because it seemed to knock back the case against the Shands yet again and provide them with an alibi. She looked up – he was not in the bedroom. But she could hear an odd sound – sniffling – coming from the bathroom. Laura looked around the corner: Remington was leaning over the counter, his arms rigidly holding him up, as sobs wracked his body. Laura dropped the piece of paper she was holding, stunned by what she saw.

"Remington?" she queried, slowly approaching him. "What…what's wrong?" Steele didn't answer, but more tears fell and he sniffed loudly, and another sob broke forth. Laura turned him towards her, and as his arms gave way, he fell forward and most of his weight fell onto her. "What's wrong, Remington? What happened?" she asked, bewildered to see him like this. Laura held him tight, his head slumped on her shoulder and her arms around his back. Remington was so much taller than her, so much heavier, that she wasn't sure she could hold his weight, but she stood strong, while he continued to sob, great wracking heaves shaking his body every few seconds.

"Please, Remington – tell me what's wrong?" Laura pleaded. She was scared now – she had only ever seen him cry once in four years of knowing him – when he had thought she herself was dead.

"I'm…sorr-sorry Laura," he answered, barely coherent.

"Look, come here…please, come with me," she said, as she adjusted her position and tried to lead him to the bedroom. Steele seemed to have found his legs now, and walked, with Laura's arm around his waist for support, until he flopped down onto the bed. He closed his eyes, put his hands in front of his face and continued to cry.

Laura sat by him, resting his head on her lap, and let him cry himself out. She ran her hands through his still wet hair, trying to soothe him. But she didn't try to speak to him – apart from once whispering 'It's okay, my love' in his ear, she simply contented herself with holding him close. Laura wondered what could have caused such a paroxysm?

When Remington seemed to have cried himself to a standstill, Laura smoothed the wet tear tracks from his face with her hand. Steele opened his eyes and looked at her blankly; Laura kissed his face and ran her hands through his hair again. "What happened, Remington?" she asked, as gently as she could.

"Er, I'm sorry, Laura."

"Shh – don't apologize. You've nothing to apologize for. Can you talk about it?"

"I don't know…I had just come out of the shower…I was thinking about Daniel…and suddenly I just…started crying, I suppose. I can't explain it. I'm sorry."

"No, no…I told you, you have nothing to apologize for," Laura said, as she rubbed away more of his tears and kissed his forehead. "Daniel: I would guess you were crying for Daniel, wouldn't you say?"

"Maybe…I'm not sure, Laura. He died weeks ago. I mean – I miss him, of course…but in the bathroom?"

Laura, close to tears herself, laughed. She kissed him again, on the forehead and face and lips. She wanted to make it better for him – to take away Remington's pain, if she could. She recalled the day after her house had been blown up – Remington had come to her in the night, to offer comfort and a shoulder to cry on as Laura had been the one laid low by grief. It was one of the moments when she had begun to fall in love with him.

"He was your father…and you had made a particularly heavy burden for yourself in searching for your father – for years. And then he was taken away from you – just as you found each other. You've never cried since he died, you know that? It was all probably inside you, buried away. We all need to grieve sometimes, Remington. It's good it came out."

Steele was embarrassed, suddenly. "I'm sorry, Laura. I don't know what you must think of me, uhm…blubbing like a baby." He made to get up, but Laura pinned him down and wouldn't let him leave.

"Don't go. And don't bottle it up, Remington. It's better to talk about it."

Steele stared at Laura for a second, her eyes red rimmed with unshed tears of compassion. His head was still resting in her lap and she was still stroking his face lovingly. He had never known how to relate to people and expose his vulnerabilities – he had never been in a normal relationship that had given him the tools to expose his fears rather than covering them up. But he nodded at Laura, "I'm okay now, really, Laura. Thank you." He pulled himself upright, and looked at her.

She leaned in and hugged him again. "Alright, so you think you're all cried out and feeling better? But let's go and sit on the couch, I'll pour us a couple of brandies, and we'll talk about it anyway. It's good to let your feelings out sometimes."

"You're right, Laura – I'm cried out now. I'm okay. But we'll drink to Daniel's memory," Steele said with a wan smile.

"You were a good son, Remington."


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

The executive boardroom at Rossi Gelati was crowded, even with the conference table having been removed and the chairs pushed close together into a semicircle. Warren Rossi sat at the front of the room, staring at the people arrayed in front of him.

His six fellow company executives sat together on his left, including his cousin, Richard Rossi. Next to them, the members of the Rossi family were seated in a group: his uncle Pietro, who was the last surviving member of the company's first generation; Warren's own brother and sister, Mark and Anna, the only ones to have dressed casually; and then three of his four cousins, including Victoria Shand and her husband Harold Shand. The largest outside shareholder, William Chizzet was seated on his right, accompanied by his lawyer and his accountant. Quietly watching events from the back of the room, outside the semicircle, were Remington Steele and his associates, Laura Steele and Mildred Krebs.

When everyone had sat down, Warren Rossi nodded to one of the security guards, who closed the door and stood just outside it, to prevent anyone entering or leaving.

"Warren, what are we doing here? What's the purpose of this meeting in such unusual circumstances on a Saturday?" asked Richard Rossi, with the look of irritation which he normally wore.

"Richard…everyone…if you'll please be quiet, we can get this meeting under way," Warren Rossi said in a raised voice. "Thank you all for coming at such short notice to this Extraordinary General Meeting of the major shareholders. When I asked you here, I said it concerned something that could potentially affect the stock price and even the very survival of the company – which is something we all have an interest in."

"That was very vague, Warren. The only reason I'm here is because you told me on the telephone that it was so serious – I had to cancel a trip to New York to attend," said William Chizzet, a blond, tall man aged about forty wearing an expensive, tan colored suit.

"And I appreciate how busy you are, William, and I am grateful you came," Rossi continued. "The reason I've called this meeting is to tell all of you about a series of attacks that the company has suffered over the last couple of months. Richard and my fellow board members know about this already – but, in summary, Rossi Gelati has suffered three incidents of sabotage during that period. Some of you may have heard about the tire slashing, and the runaway truck that crashed into one of our own ice cream trucks near the Los Angeles Music Center; these incidents were rather public. There was, in fact, an even more serious incident which we managed to keep quiet – about a month ago, somebody put a chemical laxative into some of our gelato, which led to a number of customers suffering food poisoning."

There was a murmur from the occupants of the room. "When you say that these attacks were sabotage, do you really mean they were deliberate – not accidents?" asked Pietro Rossi.

"I know it's hard to believe, Uncle Pietro, but that's exactly the point – somebody has intentionally tried to undermine the company."

"Why weren't we told about this before, Warren? As shareholders, we had a right to know," said his sister, Anna Rossi.

Richard Rossi jumped in, "You're a shareholder, Anna, but day-to-day management of the company is our responsibility as a board of directors – so in fact, you didn't have a right to know."

"Are you sure? You – the board – are answerable to the shareholders."

William Fishback, the company lawyer, answered, "Legally, Miss Rossi, your cousin Richard is correct – responsibility for day-to-day decision making rests with us executives. We are only under an obligation to report any adverse events affecting the company to the stock exchange and to shareholders if it is likely to have a material impact on the share price."

"Thank you for that summary of the legal position, William," said Warren Rossi. "Now, ladies and gentleman – as I said, over the last couple of months our company has suffered some serious incidents of industrial sabotage, which have affected our financial position quite significantly. I had no idea who was responsible for it, but I have not been idle; you see, unknown to anyone in this room, I hired a private investigator to look into who might be responsible, whether inside or outside the company."

There was another murmur from the audience, and Warren Rossi could see his fellow shareholders looking at each other – all except for William Chizzet, the only non-family shareholder, who was sitting imperturbably simply watching the scene.

"You did what?" exploded the irascible Richard Rossi. "Now that really is unacceptable, Warren – you had no right to bring in a private investigator without consulting the rest of the board of directors!"

Warren Rossi kept his face and voice calm as he replied, "As chief executive, I did what I thought necessary, Richard – especially given that anyone inside the company might have been responsible."

"Anyone? Could you suspect even one of the family, Warren?" asked his younger brother Mark Rossi, speaking for the first time.

"Everyone…please settle down! Why don't you listen to the investigator before attacking me? He's here! Can I present to you Remington Steele and Laura Steele, of Remington Steele Investigations."

Steele and Laura, dressed in business attire even though it was a Saturday, walked to the front of the room, where they stood next to Warren Rossi. Steele held his hands up for quiet, "Thank you, Mr Rossi. Ladies and gentlemen, I realize this is probably a shock for you, learning about this campaign of sabotage against Rossi Gelati. As a family company, in which everyone in this room is either a well-paid executive or a major shareholder and family member, you're obviously concerned about what you've heard here. But I can tell you that my agency has successfully got to the bottom of this problem."

There was another, louder murmur from the audience, and even Warren Rossi, who had no idea why Steele had asked him to set up this meeting, looked startled.

Steele continued, "When Warren Rossi came to us, we set about investigating the case with an open mind. The most likely scenario was that this was a case of industrial sabotage by another company – a business rival. However, we thought it was possible the attacks were planned by someone linked to the company."

"That's a very serious accusation," said Warren Rossi's younger brother, Mark.

"Of course, of course – we realize that. I won't go into the details here, but we used a number of investigative methods, including going undercover inside the company, which led us to conclude that the sabotage was being perpetrated by an insider."

Richard Rossi suddenly flushed red with anger as he yelled, "That's where I've seen you before, Steele! You were that environmental health consultant, er…Keech, right? You posed as some guy named Keech?"

Steele nodded his head in acknowledgement. "Correct, Mr Rossi."

The other executives sitting in the front row looked angry as well. One of them, Alexander Connally, added, "I cannot believe this, Warren! We are your fellow executives, and members of the board of directors. It's...it's outrageous that you would bring in some private investigator to spy on us! How dare you!"

Steele held his hands up again, to try and calm the room. "Mr Connally…everybody…if you would let me explain. Our agency discovered that the chemical laxative was added to Rossi ice cream at night, by someone who had a secret entry into the factory. We then easily found out that the person doing the sabotage was a former employee of Rossi Gelati – a man named Charles Edevane."

"I know Charles Edevane – he was a senior manager on the factory floor," said Bobby Rudner, the vice president of manufacturing.

Laura, who had been quietly watching the room and the reactions of everyone in it during the turbulent meeting, now spoke for the first time. "You're correct, Mr Rudner – Charles Edevane had worked for you in manufacturing, and therefore had intimate knowledge of how to inflict damage on the company."

"And so you've caught him? There'll be no more sabotage, then?"

"There won't, Mr Rudner," answered Laura. "Charles Edevane is dead – somebody killed him."

The room exploded in uproar, and as Steele held up his hands trying to calm the crowd, unnoticed by anyone, two men entered and sat down next to Mildred at the back. They were plain clothes detectives from the LAPD.

Finally, Steele managed to quieten his audience. "Ladies and gentlemen, my associate is quite right. As I said, we found out that the man behind the sabotage was Charles Edevane. One evening, we followed him back to his, erm…hideout, you could call it, but when we got there we found him dead – shot at close range."

"Even I didn't expect this, Mr Steele!" said Warren Rossi, looking flabbergasted. "You are saying that he wasn't working alone and someone else – Edevane's partner – then killed him?"

"Exactly! When we dug further, we found his motive: Charles Edevane had 'shorted' Rossi company stock, and hoped to make a large financial gain by undermining the company and driving the share price down. That's when we realized that the person behind the attacks, who was pulling Edevane's strings, was an insider rather than a business rival."

"One of us? An insider? So who was it?" asked Mark Rossi.

Steele and Laura stared hard at Victoria Shand and her husband Harold Shand. Slowly, everybody in the room turned to look where the Steeles were looking – at the Shands. The room was hushed as Steele almost whispered, "Charles Edevane's brokerage account was guaranteed financially by a Mr and Mrs Harold Shand."

"Victoria? No!" said the elderly Pietro Rossi, the paterfamilias.

The Shands, who had not spoken at all during the meeting, stared at the rest of the people in the room. Victoria Shand, a brunette dressed in a red business suit, who looked like a young Joan Collins, finally spoke, "A coincidence, that's all. You cannot prove anything."

Steele grinned. "You're right, Mrs Shand. But is it also a coincidence that you and your husband had taken out an option to 'short' the company's stock as well, and would have stood to benefit from any campaign of sabotage that caused a crisis in the company? I'm sure your fellow shareholders – your fellow family members – would be interested to hear that."

Victoria Shand looked defiant. "So what, Mr Steele? Can you prove that I conspired with Charles Edevane? No, you can't! The evidence is circumstantial."

Richard Rossi exploded at Steele, "What! After all this build up, you're saying that you cannot prove it? She'll reap the benefit of her plotting?"

Steele looked serious, "No, Mr Rossi, not at all. Your cousin Warren, as chief executive, asked my agency to find out who was responsible for the sabotage and to stop it; we've done that. Ladies and gentlemen, you can rest assured that your investment is safe – which is the most important thing. Edevane is dead, there'll be no further attacks on the company, and the stock price will not suffer. Even though we cannot definitely prove that Mrs Shand and her husband were the co-conspirators with Edevane, it should be of some comfort to you to know that her plans failed – she shorted the stock and the price will not fall. In summary – she lost the game."

There had been a tense silence in the room as people listened, and there was a collective exhalation of breath as Steele's audience realized the implications of his words.

"Mrs Shand and her husband have also secretly sold their stock in the company," Steele continued. "In fact, it might be argued that she does not belong in this meeting since she is not actually a shareholder anymore."

"There's still the question of who shot Charles Edevane," said Laura.

"That wasn't us!" said an agitated Harold Shand, speaking for the first time. "You can accuse my wife and me of being involved in sabotage, but there's no way I'll stand for being held responsible for a murder!"

"But we don't hold you responsible, Mr Shand," said Steele brightly.

It was now William Chizzet's turn to be surprised. "What? I thought you said this Charles Edevane was found shot dead and that it had to have been done by his accomplice?"

"That's right – he was shot by his accomplice."

"But…but you just said it wasn't Victoria and Harold who did it! I don't understand what you're getting at, Mr Steele?"

Steele and Laura now looked at the people in the room. Softly, Laura said, "My husband is right, Mr Chizzet. You see, we identified Charles Edevane as the perpetrator of the sabotage, and when we discovered his financial connection to Victoria and Harold Shand, the conspiracy quickly became clear. When Edevane was shot dead, we had prime suspects for the crime – the Shands. That was until we did some checking – they were in San Francisco at the time of the killing and they couldn't have done it."

"Thank God," said Mark Rossi. "Thank God it's not one of the family. But who did do it?"

"That's what we set out to determine," said Laura. "Our associate, Mildred Krebs, whom you can see at the back of the room, checked their alibis quite thoroughly, I can assure you. There was no question as to their whereabouts at the time of the murder – they were both seen by multiple witnesses at their hotel and it would have been impossible for either Victoria Shand or her husband to have been in LA when Edevane was killed."

"Perhaps they paid someone to do it – a hitman?" asked William Connally.

"It's possible. But when we had ruled out the Shands' direct involvement, we began to look at the case afresh. And that was when we discovered that there was another person involved with the company who had a motive to see it close down, and to see the sabotage succeed."

"Another person?" queried Richard Rossi. "I…I don't understand – you're saying that there is another party to this conspiracy?"

"That's the thing, Mr Rossi," said Laura, warming to her theme. "We were puzzled as well, until it came to us: imagine an amazing coincidence – Charles Edevane is involved in a conspiracy to sabotage the company with two different partners – neither of which knows about the other one!"

There was a stunned silence in the room as everyone absorbed Laura's words. She smiled discreetly to herself, gratified at the effect she had created; she wondered if, maybe, some of Remington's traits were rubbing off onto her, like his love of the theatrical.

Laura continued, "You see, we found some very interesting information that gave us the motive for the crime. Mildred, will you tell everyone about it please?"

Mildred stood up at the back of the room, and as everyone craned their heads around, she began to address them. "Well, Mrs Steele, what I discovered is that under the legal articles of the company, if Rossi Gelati ever shuts down, the land on which the factory is built, which is actually on a long lease, will revert to the ownership of the main titleholder. The lease is cast iron – Rossi has the right to this land for another seventy years – unless the company goes bankrupt. So the owner of the land has, in an extreme scenario, a motive to cause the company to close down and to get hold of the land."

Warren Rossi interjected, "But this is industrial land, and it's owned by some anonymous property corporation. The land isn't worth anything much – it's nothing special."

"That's true at the moment," said Mildred. "But you might all be aware that the County of Los Angeles is planning to construct a subway system in the next decade or so: the 'Blue Line', which will go through south Los Angeles down to Long Beach, will run past this neighborhood of Vernon. It's very likely that by the late 1980s, there'll be a property boom in those parts of LA where the new metro system runs, and so the owners of what look like boring industrial properties, like the Rossi factory, will be sitting on a potential goldmine. Especially if this industrial land can be rezoned for residential housing."

"You see, ladies and gentlemen," Laura said as she picked up the story, "Mildred discovered that somebody had secretly bought out the commercial property company that owned the title to the land the Rossi factory is built on. All they had to do was drive Rossi out of business and they would have received ownership of the land by default."

"_Madre mia_, who is it?" asked Pietro Rossi.

Laura looked at everyone for a few seconds, drawing out the tension. "The person who owns the title to this land, who is, in a way, now Rossi Gelati's landlord, and the person who killed Charles Edevane, is…William Fishback, general counsel and company lawyer for Rossi Gelati."

"No!" shouted William Fishback, standing up and looking indignant, while around him there was a chorus of disbelief from the rest of the people in the room. Fishback looked like he was about to walk out, when Steele nodded to the two detectives. They stood up and blocked Fishback's path, each one taking hold of one of his arms and preventing him from moving.

"This is outrageous," shouted Fishback to Steele. "You have no right to detain me – I am a private citizen and you have no powers of arrest, Steele!"

"True, Mr Fishback, but these two gentlemen can detain you, because they are members of the police," answered Steele.

"The…the police? Ha! You've got no evidence against me."

Warren Rossi, having been stunned into silence, suddenly found his voice. "Is it true, William? Are you the secret owner of the Rossi factory land?"

"What if I am? It doesn't prove that I committed any murder."

Laura looked at Fishback coolly. "Once we had discovered your motive, Mr Fishback, you became our prime suspect. I'll admit, it was very confusing, until it clicked into place that there were two separate conspiracies going on at the same time. Follow: Charles Edevane was approached by Victoria and Harold Shand to use his inside knowledge to lower the share price of the company, so that all three of them could make money by 'shorting' the shares. Now, either by sheer coincidence, or because he was intrinsically a disreputable character, you hooked up with Edevane to pursue your own campaign of sabotage in order to get hold of the land. It's quite remarkable, really – two conspiracies directed towards the same purpose, with the same 'point man' in each plot, but unknown to each other."

William Fishback, still struggling against the hold of the two cops, was shouting again, "That may be so, but you cannot prove I killed Edevane!"

"Oh, but we think we can, Mr Fishback. You see, firstly, we know from the security logs of the gated community in Malibu where you live that your car was recorded as returning home just after four in the morning on the night that Edevane was killed. Would you care to explain what you – an apparently respectable company executive – was doing coming home so late on a Friday night? Do you have an alibi?

"And then, Mildred discovered that your wife is the registered owner a twenty-two caliber revolver, the same type of gun that Charles Edevane was killed with. About an hour ago, some detectives from the LAPD served a search warrant on your wife at home and confiscated the gun, which is being tested for ballistics right now. That gun will prove to be the one that killed Edevane. And I think, Mr Fishback, that these officers will probably want to have your skin tested for gun shot residue by their forensic people – what odds would you give that the tests show you've fired a gun, even though the Edevane killing took place a week ago?"

Fishback, staring daggers at Laura, said in a flat, unemotional voice, "I am not going to say anymore; I invoke my right to silence and my right to counsel."

"Quite right, Mr Fishback, quite right," said Remington cheerfully. Nodding at the policemen, he continued, "Chaps – why don't you escort Mr Fishback to the station, eh? No doubt he can use his one phone call to speak to his counsel!"

The policemen escorted Fishback out of the room, as Warren Rossi stood up, a smile on his face, and shook Steele's hand. The tension eased as if a balloon had been burst, and suddenly the room was filled with noise as everyone began talking at once, discussing the stunning turn of events.

"Steele," said Warren Rossi, "I cannot thank you both enough…to think, we had not one but two traitors right here inside the company."

Steele, looking out of the corner of his eye, could see an argument going on between various members of the Rossi family, and then saw Anna Rossi slap her cousin Victoria Shand across the face. "Mr Rossi, thank you for the compliment, but I think you need to try and keep things calm here," he said. "I think we'll leave you all here to work through your differences…I'll speak to you next week to wrap up the case, alright?"

Warren Rossi nodded, then turned around and moved to separate his family members. Laura and Remington nodded to Mildred, then discreetly left the room and walked out of the Rossi factory. Outside, Remington and Laura sent Mildred home in a cab, and then had Fred drive them to the police station.

Ensconced in the back seat of the limousine, Laura scooted over and leaned her head against Remington's shoulder, a huge grin of satisfaction on her face.

"Why so cheerful, Mrs Steele?" asked Remington with a reassuring smile, as he put his arm around her.

"Another case successfully concluded – why shouldn't I be happy?"

"You're right. We didn't do too badly, eh?"

"I'd say so. You know, this was really unprecedented; I've never seen it before – two criminal conspiracies going on in parallel, with neither plot knowing about the other one's existence. The only link between the two schemes was Charles Edevane, who was the actual _agent provocateur_ in both cases."

"You're more experienced than me, Laura, but I'd have to say that I've never heard of anything like it," nodded Steele in agreement. "It's so unusual, I can't even think of a movie reference that parallels it," he laughed.

"Now, that is amazing."

"What will happen to Victoria Shand and her husband?"

"Well, Mildred will pass on all the information we have to the SEC on Monday. If they do some further legwork, they might be able to prove a conspiracy to undertake securities fraud: Edevane is dead, of course, but they could look into phone records to establish a pattern of contact between him and the Shands. Maybe, when they dig into Edevane, they'll find further evidence – he might have kept a diary or other paperwork for self-protection, implicating the Shands. Who knows?"

"Even if the Shands manage to escape a criminal trial, I suspect the consequences personally will not be too nice. I can see the rest of the Rossis ostracizing them for their plotting – they're an Italian family, after all."

"Uh-huh. Anna Rossi looked as if she wanted to kill her cousin, Victoria," said Laura thoughtfully. "I wonder if the Shands think betraying their family was worth it?"

"Who can say, Laura? It was Tolstoy who said every family is unique, and unhappy in its own unique way – or something along those lines, anyway."

Laura, staring out of the window pensively, pulled Steele's arm around her more tightly. "Remington," she said, "We're a family now, aren't we?"

"Er, uhm…yes, I suppose so," responded Steele in a puzzled tone. He thought of Laura as a lover, a partner and even a wife; but the word 'family' sounded odd – it was a word that carried a lot of baggage for him.

"I've been thinking…we're together now – two of us have become one. I think I'm ready to give up the lease on the loft. I want us to be close, and I need to get rid of the psychological prop of having the loft still in my name."

"Are you sure, Laura?"

"Yes, I'm sure. We can't build a new home together if I have the loft – it would be too tempting to run away there every time we have a fight or when you and I hit a rough patch."

"You and I fight? How could you possibly think that, Laura? We're just not the types to fight!" grinned Steele.

Laura matched his grin for a second, just before she melted into his arms as he kissed her.

In the front seat, Fred steadfastly kept his eyes on the road and away from the rear view mirror.


End file.
